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A LINE A DAY 


OTHER BOOKS 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


Dr. Ellen 
Open House 

The Top of the Morning 
Mothers and Fathers 
Pleasures and Palaces 
Ever After 
Diantha 

The Seed of the Righteous 
At the Sign of the Oldest House 
A Girl Named Mary 
The Starling 
Joanna Builds a Nest 












A LINE A DAY 


By 

JULIET WILBOR TOMPKINS 


Illustrated by 

John Alonzo Williams 


m 


» j 

> 



INDIANAPOLIS 

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 


Copyright, 1923 

By The Bobbs-Merrill Company 



Printed in the United States of America 



PRESS OF 

BRAUNWORTH & CO. 
BOOK MANUFACTURERS 
BROOKLYN, N. Y. 


OCT 19 1923 

©CU759469 




l 







A LINE A DAY 


n 


X 


A LINE A DAY 


CHAPTER I 

It was the last day of the old year, perhaps 
the last day of the old order of life. Mary 
Lee would only be funny in the presence of 
her mother’s solemn suspense, but Mrs. Lee 
had watched for the dawn as a girl might 
watch for her wedding day. Every earthly 
good was possible if Austin Lee wanted to 
see his granddaughter. 

The summons could mean only the one 
thing: that the solitary old age so wilfully 
chosen had grown dull and sad past mortal 
bearing, and Austin Lee was turning back to 
his own. He had been feeble for several 
years, his longest journey a slow shuffle 
from the stove in the ancient front parlor to 
his bed in the back parlor. The rest of the 

9 


10 


A LINE A DAY 


old mansion was shuttered, given over to 
dust and decay, and it was said that the vil¬ 
lage children liked to pretend fear of the 
place, going elaborately across the street 
when they passed and running wildly if they 
saw Austin Lee looking out. Fifteen years of 
silence and estrangement would have seemed 
to deny hope, but Mrs. Lee had kept a des¬ 
perate faith in the power of blood, when it 
came to last wills and testaments. She read 
the curt note of invitation with a fainting 
breath that said, “At last!” 

Mary Lee actually slept late and had to be 
awakened. Her mother kept coming to her 
door to lean worriedly on the floor mop and 
watch her dressing with critical, expert eyes. 
Mrs. Lee’s hair, crinkled black and silver, 
was beautifully curved and molded, and 
under her enveloping apron a Batik silk gar¬ 
ment, loosely belted about her slender body, 
made her look just what a successful por¬ 
trait painter should look at ten o’clock in the 
morning—one button would drop the apron. 
In her absorption she forgot to drop the 
apron when a neighbor brought back a book. 


A LINJE A DAY 11 

but her explanation was charmingly light 
and gay: 

“My wretched cleaning woman failed me 
—you know how they are! And I couldn’t 
begin the New Year with a dirty house. So 
I’m doing it myself!” She made the house¬ 
cleaning seem a pleasant adventure; she 
could always make everything seem exactly 
right. But no one could foretell what Mary 
Lee would do with a situation. 

“I wish your grandfather had asked me, 
too,” she said uneasily. “It is so important— 
this may be the most important day of your 
life, Mary Lee!” 

The trouble with Mary Lee was that she 
had no sense of relative values. When she 
was a child, a five-cent doll made her just as 
happy as a five-dollar one; and she had actu¬ 
ally started to write to her grandfather that 
she could not come because she had an en¬ 
gagement for luncheon! Mrs. Lee had settled 
the engagement for her, perfectly, over the 
telephone; 

“You know, old Austin Lee is her grand¬ 
father—and he wants to see her. He’s such 


12 


A LINE A DAY 


a strange old man, shut up alone in a big 
house with his wretched millions that don’t 
do him any good at all—if he is turning to 
his kin, one can’t refuse him. He is so much 
more pathetic to me than if he wer.e poor!” 

Mary Lee had listened with a quiver at the 
base of her nose, a swirl of tiny eddies about 
lips that were not actually smiling. 

“You’re a wonder, mother,” was all she 
had said. It was strange that with her per¬ 
fect appreciation of her mother’s tact she 
could not seem to acquire a measure of it for 
herself. Her father had been graceless, 
downright, an uproarious laugher. Mary Lee 
kept her laughter inside, but it was always 
there, just underneath her handsome gravity. 

“I wish you could go in my place,” she 
said, putting on a dashing toque of velvet and 
fur. No one could have dreamed that her 
mother had made it out of the sleeve of an 
old evening cloak. Mrs. Lee’s portraits might 
be open to question, but her skill in dress was 
supreme. The girl turning from the mirror 
could have belonged in any white marble 
mansion of the city, and her mother’s eyes 
softened and triumphed as they appraised. 


A LINE A DAY 


13 


“You don’t look as if we needed money, 
and I’m sure that is wise with your grand¬ 
father,” she said. “Now, darling, do be care¬ 
ful !” 

“I’ll try,” Mary Lee called back from the 
tiny stairs. 

Their house had been small even when it 
was a garage; made over with stucco and 
beams and window boxes and an iron lantern 
on a hook, it was a doll’s house. The studio 
took all of the ground floor except for a 
minute kitchenette, and the two rooms up¬ 
stairs were just big enough for bed and 
bureau. 

“Not an inch of waste space—that is the 
charm of it to us!” Mrs. Lee always 
explained. 

The street was only a half-block long and 
its original garages had all been converted 
into stuccoed studios. The one opposite had 
kept its broad door, and as Mary Lee came 
out a young man in clay-stained jeans and 
a torn sweater was coaxing a nervous horse 
over its threshold into an interior that was 
still barnlike. He greeted Mary Lee with 
enthusiasm. 


14 


A LINE A DAY 


“Look what Fve got,” he shouted, his face 
alight. It was a charming face, of a child¬ 
like purity and candor. Some called it mis¬ 
leading. 

“Are you going to model him?” she asked. 

“I’m going to live with him!” was the joy¬ 
ous answer. “I’ve traded off everything I 
had in the world for him except my bed. Fel¬ 
low wanted my Indian drum—that’s how it 
started. He’s got blood—points! Ivan, meet 
Mary Lee.” 

She acknowledged the introduction by 
stroking the brown nose. “And now, if any 
one wants an equestrian statue, you will be 
ready for him,” she interpreted. 

“Exactly!” He walked along beside her, 
his hand tucked affectionately through the 
horse’s bridle. “And there’s good old 
Pegasus. And the Dying Cowboy. And the 
Young Centaur.” 

“And His Master’s Voice,” she added. 

They piled it up, absurdly, with great en¬ 
joyment. And then: 

“Do you really think we are as funny as we 
seem to each other?” he asked confidentially. 


A LINE A DAY 


15 


He always walked sidewise with Mary Lee, 
turned wholly to her. There were no con¬ 
cealments about Walter Lucas. 

“I think I am,” she said. “I have to be. I 
don’t dare stop.” 

That made him grave. “You mean you 
have to dance because they’re shooting at 
your feet?” 

She liked that. “Walter, you are almost as 
satisfactory as another girl,” she said 
warmly. 

He did not mind at all. “My mother was a 
woman,” he explained. “Well, there are good 
times coming. Ivan will make me rich and 
famous. And then I can marry you, Mary 
Lee.” 

“But will you?” she asked sadly, and he 
crowed with laughter. They had reached the 
corner, but Walter was simply ready to walk 
up the avenue with her in his battered jeans, 
leading the uneasy horse. 

“I have to take a bus, and I’m afraid they 
won’t let you both on,” she said. “I am go¬ 
ing to Uplands to lunch with my grandfather, 
by special invitation.” 


16 


A LINE A DAY 


“The tightwad?” he asked interestedly. 
“That looks promising to me!” 

“So it does to my mother.” She sighed 
aloud. “She is sure I will spoil it in some 
way. I feel so responsible.” 

He slowly shook his head, smiling wisdom. 
“Just be what you are. He’ll fall for you,” he 
assured her. “And then, if he comes across—” 
But a bus was in sight and she hurried to 
meet it. A last glimpse showed Walter try¬ 
ing in vain to mount the whirling steed. 

“Crazy boy!” was her indulgent comment. 

Mary Lee, facing two hours on the train, 
looked about for diversion and found it just 
ahead. The car was crowded with people 
going out of town for New Year’s Day, and a 
severely tailored, stoutly built young woman 
in the early thirties was explaining in strong, 
cheerful tones to an unwilling listener that 
no one had a right to hold a seat, now that 
the train was starting. The other protested 
that “he might get on at One Hundred and 
Twenty Fifth Street,” but moved her bag. 
Mary Lee’s gravity showed a subterranean 
quiver. 


A LINE A DAY 


17 


“Good old Julia!” she silently applauded, 
and instead of going forward to greet her 
cousin, she settled back to enjoy her. 

Julia opened a periodical and put on shell 
rimmed spectacles, but she had little leisure 
to read. A bag had been placed in the aisle, 
endangering passengers, and she saw to its 
removal. She had ventilators opened, and 
when neighbors complained of draughts, she 
explained, firmly and pleasantly, just what 
our overheated cars did to the health. The 
small boy in the seat ahead was fractious, 
and Julia talked to his mother with great 
good sense about managing him; and when 
her seatmate volunteered that she was going 
to a sick father, Julia took a genuine interest 
in his case and told her just what to do for 
him. She really was splendid; everything 
she advised was so right. She presently fell 
into a political argument with a man across 
the aisle, and proved to him that he was the 

dupe of ancient shibboleths, presenting him 

♦ 

with a radical weekly that would set him 
straight. Protests containing the words Pro- 
German and Bolshevik were being clearly 


18 


A LINE A DAY 


and kindly answered when the train’s stop¬ 
ping brought the victim to his feet; but Mary 
Lee suspected that he made the station an ex¬ 
cuse to sneak into the next car. When her 
station was called her cousin also rose, and 
they met on the platform outside. 

“Oh, how do you do, Mary? I suppose 
grandfather has sent for you, too,” Julia said 
with her large, strong handclasp. She was 
the only person who said “Mary”; every one 
else made it Mary-Lee, in one word, almost 
as if it were spelled Merrily. “What a pity 
we didn’t see each other.” 

“Oh, I saw you.” Mary Lee’s serene, un¬ 
necessary candor nearly drove her mother 
mad, but it only made her cousin laugh. 

“He doesn’t seem to have sent down to 
meet us,” was all she said. 

They took a battered taxi that lurched off 
over the frozen road with a great clashing of 
windows. It was bitterly cold, and the driver 
beat a hand in a broken glove against his 
breast. The road led through a forlorn set¬ 
tlement strewn with rubbish, and the rotting 
houses, huddled in the squalor of their leaf- 


A LINE A DAY 


19 


less yards, showed broken windows and 
dead chimneys. A lean cat, crouched in a 
fence corner, turned on them a hopeless 
stare. The driver’s cough visibly shook him. 

“I want to go home,” said Mary Lee. 
“Grandfather’s millions aren’t worth this.” 

“Millions! That is one of your mother’s 
fancies,” Julia declared, looking about her 
with alert interest. “I don’t believe grand¬ 
father is rich at all. Saving isn’t like earning. 
And a miser often makes bad investments, 
his judgment is warped. I think we may 
find that he has hardly anything.” 

“Then why did we come?” Mary Lee com¬ 
plained. 

“Because he is an old man and wants to see 
us.” Julia spoke rebukingly yet always with 
good humor. “Considering that it is the first 
time in some fifteen years, and you and I are 
all the kin he has—” She broke off to watch 
dispassionately as a couple of forlorn curs 
fell into a bloody wrangle. “They ought to 
be shot,” she said. 

Mary Lee had covered her eyes and ears. 
“Oh, I want to go home to my mother.” 


20 


A LINE A DAY 


“I saw your mother yesterday, shopping— 
earrings and white gloves,” Julia said pres¬ 
ently, when the car had mounted from dere¬ 
lict Simmons Street to prosperous Simmons 
Avenue. “The clerk evidently took her for a 
lady of high fashion; every other word was 
‘Madam.’ ” 

Mary Lee became subtly on guard, though 
all she showed was a general bodily relaxa¬ 
tion, an air of settling down into pleasant 
converse. 

“Ah, those are the rewards,” she said seri¬ 
ously. 

“I believe in looking what you are,” Julia 
challenged. 

“But it’s so wonderful to know what you 
are;” Mary Lee’s tone was admiring. “I can’t 
seem to find out.” 

“You ought to have by this time—you’re 
twenty-five. I certainly know that I am a 
teacher of history in a girl’s private school.” 
Julia’s hand passed approvingly over her 
severe tailor-made and her mind’s eye seemed 
to see her plain fore-an-after cloth hat, a bit 
too small for her full face, against Mary Lee’s 


A LINE A DAY 


21 


swirling velvet and fur. “Why should I want 
to masquerade as a woman of fashion? I 
might fool an occasional clerk, but that’s all.” 

“Well,” Mary Lee thought it out, “if you 
look a swell, and look it, and look it, perhaps 
in time it will strike in and you’ll be it!” She 
offered that triumphantly, and as they ap¬ 
proached their grandfather’s house she made 
a further offer of her powder box. Julia re¬ 
fused in the expected words—one could al¬ 
ways count on Julia’s reactions. That they 
ran so true to type gave Mary Lee a mysteri¬ 
ous enjoyment. 


CHAPTER II 


In the days of Austin Lee’s father, the 
judge, the Lee home had been the village 
show place, and Mary Lee could remember 
the gay awnings and the big garden, full of 
every kindly fruit and bright flower, of her 
grandmother’s time. When she was gone, 
the queerness that she had laughed and loved 
down gradually took possession of Austin 
Lee. His sons died, and so closed the last 
doors to human relations. He would have 
nothing more to do with their families. 

“I don’t like my daughters-in-law and I 
never did,” he explained to the doctor when 
he tried to reestablish connections. “Sophie 
would lead me into the church and Laura 
would paint my portrait—I don’t know 
which would be worse. And their girls are 
just like them—not a Lee trait. They aren’t 
going to get my money. Tell ’em I’ve made 

22 


A LINE A DAY 


23 


my will and their trailing up here won’t 
make me change it. Both my sons inherited 
money from their mother, plenty of money. 
Put it all in a fool venture because their 
wives wanted to get rich quicker. They’ll 
have no second chance from me, those 
women. Tell ’em to let me alone.” 

So Doctor Murray, who lived next door, had 
added Austin Lee to his burden of responsi¬ 
bility. He had played chess with the old 
man, and given him an occasional home 
truth, and written a yearly report to his fam¬ 
ily; and perhaps the doctor’s death, a few 
months before, had had something to do with 
this startling invitation. Perhaps even old 
Austin Lee could be lonely. 

Julia told the driver when to come back 
for them and what to do for his cough, and 
gave him the exact fare. Mary Lee, behind 
her back, slipped a coin into the broken 
glove. The path was icy and Julia made hard 
work of it, clutching her arm. 

“I shall tell him to strew some ashes before 
we come out again,” she said with righteous 
indignation, her attention all on her feet. 


24 


A LINE A DAY 


“Oh, let us strew ashes on our heads,” mur¬ 
mured Mary Lee, looking from the dead 
mansion to the desolation that had been the 
garden. 

A village woman, deaf and disapproving, 
admitted them and indicated that they might 
leave their coats in the hall. It was glacially 
cold; but when she opened the door of what 
used to be the most dignified and splendid of 
front parlors, a blast of heat met them. The 
house had been done over in the period when 
the mantelpiece became an elaborate struc¬ 
ture of mirrors and little railed balconies and 
the walls were dadoed shoulder high with 
yellow oak and every opening had a carved 
and spindled grill, and for this finery there 
was no pleasant shabbiness, no mellow old 
age; it could only turn squalid, like a crone 
in curls and furbelows. An uncompromising 
black stove had been set up in the fireplace, 
and close beside it sat a shrunken figure. 
Julia went forward with a healthy interest, 
but before the heat and the old smell and 
the toothless gaps in the little spindled rail¬ 
ings, Mary Lee’s step quailed. 


A LINE A DAY 


25 


“Shut that door, if you please!” There was 
life in the voice, also irritation. “You don’t 
need to kiss me, either of you,” it went on 
more genially. “I hate family poppycock!” 
He gave them his two hands and looked them 
well over. 

Though Austin Lee’s face hung in the loose 
square of old age, it was still handsome: his 
white hair was soft and thick, his skin sur~ 
prisingly pink for one who lived in that at¬ 
mosphere; but his head had sunk close to his 
shoulders, seemingly fixed there, and he 
made no attempt to rise. “You’re Sophie’s 
daughter and you’re Laura’s,” he went on. 
“Not much Lee about you. Well, pull up and 
get acquainted.” 

Julia had plenty to say to any one. She 
opened briskly on topics suggested by the 
drive up, village improvement, good roads, 
public hygiene. Mary Lee sat by in silence, 
drooping a little—she had her mother’s dark 
grace—swamped in melancholy before this 
shabby old man who had let his head kill his 
heart, and who had forgotten the healing vir¬ 
tue of fresh air. 


26 


A LINE A DAY 


“Oh, I want to go home!” was her secret la¬ 
ment. Julia, good citizen that she was, 
wanted to take hold. 

“Grandfather, do you know that it is about 
ninety-two in here?” she interrupted herself, 
obligingly ready to open a window. 

“Oh, really? I mean to keep it at ninety- 
five.” Humorous malice smiled her into her 
seat again. “You find it hot?” he inquired 
of Mary Lee. 

It was one of those places where her moth¬ 
er’s tact would have been priceless. Mary 
Lee’s idea of being careful was to say, with 
a glimmer of an answering wickedness: 

“I don’t think I’ll faint, thank you.” 

“H’h!” He made it a note of general con¬ 
tempt. Then the housekeeper came in to 
push a table in front of him and set it with 
three places, and he forgot his guests, watch¬ 
ing her every movement with exasperated 
intentness. When a cup coasted on its saucer 
his “Look out!” was a yelp that might have 
unstrung weaker nerves; but if she heard she 
paid no attention. 

The service was a mixture of fine old por- 



"I don’t think Fll faint, thank you. 












A LINE A DAY 


27 


celain and the commonest village ware. Two 
sorry little lamb chops, dead on a mound of 
rigid mashed potato, was their portion, while 
their host had a bowl of soup, and watched 
their hands as they took bread and butter 
and tea. Julia felt the necessity of convers¬ 
ing during the meal, but he frankly ignored 
what was said. He could not pay attention 
to them until the table was safely cleared 
again and he had pointed out the piece of 
coal that was to go into the stove. Then he 
sank back in his chair, and his eyes went 
from one to the other while his sunken head 
stayed fixed. 

“Well, now, you’re wondering why I got 
you up here,” he began. 

“It’s natural enough,” Julia encouraged him. 

He shot a keen blue glance at Mary Lee. 
“You find it natural?” He snapped. 

“Oh, no, it isn’t natural.” She tried to tem¬ 
per it with a forlorn smile. “This whole day 
is like a queer dream.” 

He continued to study her. “Such as you 
have after too much mince pie?” he sug¬ 
gested grimly. 


28 


A LINE A DAY 


“Mary doesn’t mean anything of the sort,” 
Julia interposed with kindly vigor. “She 
means that it has an unusual quality, finding 
yourself a stranger to your own grandfather.” 

“Strangers!” The old man pounced on the 
word. “That’s just it. Now, I don’t know if I 
can make you girls understand, but I want a 
chance to know something of you, to size you 
up without having you all over the place. It 
isn’t family feeling waking up; it’s something 
far more important.” He scowled at them, 
finding the task hard and hating the effort. 
“I have a little property—not much.” A quick 
glance searched their faces to make sure that 
they believed. “But, such as it is, I’ve given 
most of my life to nursing it and keeping it 
together. You probably call me a miser. 
Well, all right. If other men get as much 
satisfaction spending their money as I’ve had 
saving mine, they’re welcome to it.” He 
laughed to himself, softly rubbing his hands 
together as though the joke were on the 
others. 

“Now, not being a fool, I know that some 
day I’m going to die. My old friend Doctor 


A LINE A DAY 


29 


Murray died last summer. I made my last 
will and testament fifteen years ago and 
never expected to change it.” The old anger 
swelled the veins of his forehead. “People 
who lose money once will lose it twice. But 
I don’t like some things I’ve heard about the 
institution that I’ve made my heir—don’t like 
the man at the head. And it is just possible 
that one or the other of you has devel¬ 
oped some sense. I’ve got to know how my 
property will be treated, what sort of hands 
it will fall into.” He spoke accusingly, as 
though they had already shown themselves 
unfit. “I don’t want it divided. I want it to 
go down whole, together, as I have kept it. I 
don’t owe anything to either of you; but if 
one or the other would know the worth of it 
—What do you do?” he barked suddenly at 
Julia. 

She told about her history classes, enthusi¬ 
asm and success irradiating her fresh, pleas¬ 
ant face. And then the dreaded question was 
turned on Mary Lee. What did she do? She 
could not seem to think. Scrambled house¬ 
work done before her mother’s sitters ar- 


30 


A LINE A DAY 


rived, furtive cooking done after they left, in¬ 
terminable tea-pouring for possible sitters, 
posing in sitters’ garments for folds and tex¬ 
tures—Mrs. Lee could have made it sound 
like a career; but Mary Lee could only break 
into a smile of candid helplessness. Then 
something that Walter had said came to her 
aid. 

“Oh, I don’t do—I just am!” she said. 

“H’h!” It was an ambiguous comment, 
and Julia was troubled. Getting one hun¬ 
dred herself was not enough for her gener¬ 
ous spirit; she wanted every one to pass high. 

“It takes time to find one’s life work,” she 
said. “Mary is a good deal younger than I 
am.” 

He could not help seeing that this was nice 
of Julia. “Well, I dare say you’re both good 
girls,” he admitted grudgingly. “Now I’m go¬ 
ing to ask you to do something. You’re per¬ 
fectly free to refuse.” He brought out two 
little diaries bound in imitation leather and 
inscribed in flowing letters, “A Line A Day.” 
“If you think it’s worth the trouble, I want 
you to take these home and put down the 


A LINE A DAY 


31 


most important fact or event every day. Just 
five or six words: Saved a child’s life, made 
a pudding—whatever it is. You’ve got to do 
it seriously if it’s to be of any use to me. Pre¬ 
sently I’ll ask you for them. Don’t consider 
it unless it seems to you worth the gamble. 
It is a gamble. I promise nothing.” 

Julia took her little book with a strong 
hand; Mary Lee accepted hers as though it 
might explode. 

“I think it would interest me to do that for 
my own sake,” Julia said. “It would size 
things up for me, show me what progress I 
am making.” 

Then there was a pause, and Mary Lee had 
to say something. 

“I suppose it will give you a good laugh, 
anyway,” she admitted with a long sigh. 

He studied her with an amused quirk. 
“There’s some Lee about you, somewhere,” he 
said. “Don’t put down what sounds best, put 
down what is really important to you. Why 
aren’t you married?” he added suddenly. 

“I wish I knew,” was the wistful answer. 
“But—” She broke off, for the door had 


32 


A LINE A DAY 


opened and a man stood looking surprisedly 
at the guests. He was very tall and big, very 
well dressed; an atmosphere of distinguished 
prosperity lay about him. 

“Oh, come in, George, and shut the door;” 
Austin Lee’s voice was almost cordial. “Girls, 
this is Doctor Murray’s son.” 

“Why, Georgie Murray!” said Julia with a 
laugh. 

“Julia!” He laughed, too, and shook hands 
in bluff and brotherly fashion. “And this 
must be little Mary Lee,” he went on, amused 
at old memories. “You wouldn’t remember 
me.” 

The face she looked up into was not hand¬ 
some: the rough eyebrows made a dark bar 
across a heavy nose, the chin was heavy for 
a man yet in the early thirties; but it was a 
face that counted. 

“Oh, don’t I?” she said. 

He sat down between them, and his pleas¬ 
ure at being there was flattering. Even as a 
boy he had had the quality of importance. 

“Was I a young brute?” he asked inter¬ 
estedly. 


A LINE A DAY 


33 


“You were a young gentleman, a noble be¬ 
ing in white tennis flannels. I thought you 
dashing beyond words,” she explained. 

“That isn’t the way I remember him,” said 
Julia briskly. 

“But you were bossy, Julia,” he pleaded 
with chuckling enjoyment. “A fellow has to 
stand up for his own rights. Remember the 
time—” 

He and Julia had stores of reminiscences, 
and they poured them out for Mary Lee 
while she leaned back and looked on. She, 
too, had her importance; but it was as elu¬ 
sive as a fragrance while George Murray’s 
was built on solid fact. They almost forgot 
the old man who sat beside the stove, follow¬ 
ing with crafty blue eyes every glance that 
passed between George and Mary Lee. When 
the taxi came for his guests Austin Lee gave 
them each a blank little handshake, as 
though he warded them off, and forestalled 
possible offers of care or companionship. 

“I’ll let you know if I want anything,” he 
insisted. “Well, good-by, good-by. Don’t 
miss your train!” 


34 


A LINE A DAY 


They stepped out into the pure cold with 
deep breaths of relief. George Murray fol¬ 
lowed to put them into the cab. 

“I go to see him whenever I’m up here,” 
he reassured them. “We’re very good 
friends. My family will always keep an eye 
on him; but I’m glad if he is turning to you.” 

“You couldn’t call it turning, exactly,” 
said Mary Lee. 

“Well, it may be the beginning,” said 
Julia. “George, it has been nice to see you.” 

He was not at all ready to let them go. He 
ran back for his coat and went with them to 
the station, his solid bulk cutting off the mis¬ 
eries that had so oppressed Mary Lee on the 
way up. At the station he found that he 
could go half way to town with them and 
catch a train back in time for dinner, and he 
bought a ticket with great enjoyment of his 
own impulsive action. 

“You girls will have to ride back with me,’’ 
he declared, turning a seat to face theirs in 
the empty car. “Why, I never get on a train 
if I can help it—I don’t know what you’ve 
done to me!” He said it straight at Mary 


A LINE A DAY 


35 


Lee, watching amusedly to see how she 
would take it. 

“I know exactly what you have done to 
me,” she said promptly. 

Julia was not going to let the conversation 
degenerate into silly repartee. “It’s queer,” 
she said; “youth isn’t a happy time, and yet 
we turn back to it as if it were. George, do 
you remember—” 

He remembered everything, and many 
things that she had forgotten. For all three 
the hour had charm. George would have 
passed his station but for Julia’s reminder. 
When he had gone, the two sat silent until 
the lights of the city roused them. 

“I am glad George lives in New York; I 
hope we shall see something of him,” Julia 
said contentedly. And then, as they went 
into the tunnel. “I’m glad he’s a lawyer. A 
lawyer with high ideals can be a power for 
good.” 

Mary Lee showed a touch of perversity. 
“Because he remembers sliding down the 
barn roof doesn’t prove he has high ideals,” 
she argued. 



36 


A LINE A DAY 


Julia was undisturbed. “I’m sure George 
is a fine man. On the right side of public 
questions. He could be very useful to the 
Woman’s Committee. I must have a talk 
with him.” 

“We’ve been right here all these years,” 
Mary Lee insisted. “Why hasn’t he looked 
us up if he’s so crazy about us?” 

“Oh, life is crowded,” Julia disposed of 
that. “I wonder if he had anything to do 
with the old man’s sending for us? They 
seem on good terms, and George might have 
urged it.” 

“Queer day,” Mary Lee said, and sighed. 
“You will get the loot, Julia.” 

“Possibly,” Julia admitted. “But he is ca¬ 
pricious. Anything may happen. If you get 
it—” 

“I’ll give you half,” Mary Lee interposed. 

“No. No—a man’s wishes about his prop¬ 
erty should be respected.” Julia was certain 
about that. “He wants it to go on whole. I 
should not expect to divide with you, and I 
would not take anything. If we secretly 
planned to divide, it would not be playing 
fair with him.” 


A LINE A DAY 


37 


Mary Lee looked depressed. “Well, you 
deserve it, Julie,” was all she said. 

The little studio houses were alight, bright 
as Christmas cards. From Walter Lucas’s 
came a sound of trampling hoofs and shouts 
of laughter. Mary Lee smiled to herself and 
repeated, “Crazy boy!” but absently, and as 
though from a great distance. A year seemed 
to have passed over her since Walter had 
displayed his new model. Her own house 
had a golden glow, and ladies were about the 
tea table. Mrs. Lee’s greeting showed how 
important the moment was; it said invisibly, 
“Don’t interrupt!” 

In a high carved chair that would have 
made any woman feel enthroned sat a sabled 
and pearled beauty, clearly not indigenous, a 
little uneasy and on guard, as the rich from 
other towns learn to be, and yet thrilled at 
finding herself in the studio atmosphere. The 
good friend who had brought her was talking 
casually of celebrities whom Mrs. Lee had 
painted, and the latter was leaning forward 
on one long arm, studying her visitor. 

“Oh, but I should like to paint you just as 


38 


A LINE A DAY 


you sit, that gorgeous fur trailing over your 
shoulder,” she exclaimed with a painting 
gesture, a sketch of a flowing brush. 

“I wish you could,” said the good friend 
devoutly. “Laura, isn’t there any way that 
Mrs. Fairfield could see your portrait of 
Mrs. Fitzgibbons?” 

Mrs. Lee shook a regretful negative. “They 
don’t exhibit it any more—you know, they 
have built a room around it. They really 
can’t let it go.” 

“I suppose not. But can’t you imagine 
Mrs. Fairfield against just such a dull gold 
background—” 

“Long folds of velvet—” 

“Black?” 

“No, amber—” 

They had an air of closing down on some¬ 
thing hapless and unprotected. Mary Lee 
had often watched this drama and known 
unnatural impulses to stand by the victim, to 
murmur in her dazed ear, “Steady—I’ll get 
you out!” She sat by passively and saw the 
portrait nearly landed; at the last moment 
the beauty made a desperate rally and got 


A LINE A DAY 


39 


away, the good friend accompanying her as 
though nothing whatever had happened be¬ 
yond a hospitable cup of tea. Yet hope was 
not necessarily over. Mrs. Lee’s fervent, “I’d 
like to paint you in that!” still sometimes 
worked. 

“Close shave,” observed Mary Lee. 

Her mother never heard such comments, 
could not have understood them if she had 
heard. She was in every line a gracious hos¬ 
tess who has entertained a pleasant caller. 

“I am glad Mrs. Fairfield has been here,” 
she said. “She has been wanting Carrie to 
bring her for so long.” Then, with the inci¬ 
dent thus closed and decorated, she turned 
to the main business of the day: “Well, dear, 
how is your grandfather?” 

Mary Lee wasted no time on her grand¬ 
father’s health. “Julia and I are to compete,” 
she said, bringing out her diary and looking at 
it with dark distaste. “We are to write a line 
a day, and the record that pleases him most 
may possibly get the prize. Nothing is prom¬ 
ised. Do you see a picture of my daily life 
getting me anything?” 


40 


A LINE A DAY 


She had to do a great deal of explaining, 
and for once in her courageous life Mrs. Lee 
showed discouragement. Her face sagged 
into tired lines. 

“I have always thought that he would re¬ 
lent eventually—that the future was safe,” 
she admitted; but when Mary Lee seized the 
chance to urge that she go to work to make 
it safe, her mother swiftly took up again her 
role of success. 

“There is not the slightest need of that, and 
it would hurt my standing, dear,” she said, 
as she always did. “A portrait painter of any 
rank whatever can have a little home like 
this. And I need you here; the social part is 
so important. I really couldn’t get on with¬ 
out you. The money would be pleasant if it 
did come—that was all I meant. Let me help 
you with the diary. I’m sure we can make 
it sound very interesting and important.” 

Mary Lee had a silent laugh for that. “Oh, 
Julia will win. Can’t you see hers?” She 
took off her hat and ran tired fingers up into 
her hair. “Have we anything to eat in the 
house? I’m starved.” 


A LINE A DAY 


41 


“Yes, dear. I knew you wouldn’t feel like 
going out to-night,” said Mrs. Lee, gathering 
the cups. It was her theory that they took 
their dinners out: breakfast and lunch were 
nothing, and it saved having a servant there, 
spoiling their dear little home; but she made 
every night an exception. “I thought baked 
beans would make a nice change. It seemed 
a pity to have a chicken or anything like that 
when we are dining out to-morrow.” 

Mary Lee laid a hand lightly on the erect 
shoulder. “I’ll do everything; you go and 
rest,” she commanded, her touch a caress. 
The unflinching, impenetrable front that 
that mother kept turned to life was to her all 
the more touching because it was so unneces¬ 
sary. The poor darling belonged to the pre¬ 
tentious past and could not accept the great 
modern gift of freedom. She would never 
learn that one did not have to succeed! 

The day’s story had to be retold at dinner, 
and then, very casually, George Murray’s 
name slipped in. Mary Lee put all the em¬ 
phasis on his and Julia’s reminiscences; but 
when Mrs. Lee found out that he had come 


42 


A LINE A DAY 


half way to town with them, she seemed to 
tighten like a tuned string: the flat note of 
her disappointment was gone. 

“I remember him as such a nice boy,” she 
said with enthusiasm. “One could see then 
that he would succeed. In college he be¬ 
longed to all the best clubs. He has come 
right up in his profession; I often see his 
name in the papers. I don’t know why we 
have so lost sight of him.” And she looked 
at her daughter with bright, brooding eyes. 

The daily prayer of her heart was a good 
marriage for Mary Lee. From eighteen to 
twenty the girl had had dozens of suitors, 
some of them highly desirable, but she would 
only be funny about them; she would not see 
for herself the importance of a good match, 
and one could not quite discuss it with her. 
Then the war had swept them all away, and 
they had never come back in the same pro¬ 
fusion. Mary Lee herself had changed, 
grown indifferent. No well-born, correct 
and safe young man is going very far with a 
girl when she won’t take the slightest trouble 
about him. For all the intimacy of their 


A LINE A DAY 


43 


lives, Mrs. Lee did not dream that her child’s 
heart had tagged after a highly well-born, 
correct and safe young officer all over the 
Western Front for a long year, and had 
known its own baptism of fire when he had 
come home married to the girl who had 
nursed his w T ound. 

“Tell me about George,” Mrs. Lee urged. 

Mary Lee, elbows on either side of her cof¬ 
fee cup, cast about in a panic for conceal¬ 
ment. Ever since George had left them she 
had had a sense that that hour on the train 
w r as momentous, but to have it acknowledged 
would be intolerable. 

“Julia and he got on wonderfully,” she 
said. “They did most of the talking, and it 
was chiefly about him—that was why he en¬ 
joyed it so much. He looks a terrific swell. 
If you saw him going into his club, you’d 
never dream that you could once have 
played Tally-I-0 with him in the back yard. 
He’s like an older brother to those godlike 
young men with slicked hair and English 
voices who sometimes stray into the bus and 
make you feel like an alley cat.” 


44 


A LINE A DAY 


Her mother frowned. “There is no need 
that you should ever feel like that,” she said 
sharply. Mary Lee’s mischievous hand was 
always menacing the careful edifice of their 
position. 

“Oh, well, he acted like an equal,” she con¬ 
ceded. “I dare say it was a relief to him 
just to be old Doc Murray’s son for a while. 
Julia quite bloomed. I never saw her so in¬ 
terested in a man before. She didn’t reform 
anybody on the way back. A boy across the 
aisle threw peanut shells on the floor and 
Julia didn’t say a word.” 

The light in her mother’s face was dimmed 
but not wholly put out. “Poor Julia!” was 
all she said. She felt a sincere pity for Julia’s 
undecorated life. No clerk would ever call 
her Madam! 

The day was not over, for the Old Year 
must be escorted out with appropriate cere¬ 
monies. Mrs. Lee was too tired to go out, 
and Mary Lee would have stayed home too 
but for her mother’s conviction that the Hat¬ 
fields knew everybody and it might lead 
“somewhere.” 


A LINE A DAY 


45 


“Sitters or suitors?” the girl asked. 

“My dear, I know you don’t mean to be 
coarse,” her mother began patiently. 

“I’m not so sure,” was the cheerful inter¬ 
ruption. “Well, I’ll do my best. Good-by 
till next year.” And she set out alone, her 
silver slippers touching the pavements as 
lightly as possible. Her mother would not 
countenance protective velvet boots because 
they looked as though you had come in the 
cars, and the fact that you had so come only 
made it worse. Mary Lee used to fight such 
edicts: she would put her good slippers in 
her pocket, and wear her fur cap in when she 
might have slipped it off on the steps; but 
since the war she had grown more indiffer¬ 
ent about her own way, more reluctant to 
hurt her mother. The old sense of fun was 
dimmed to irony, but she did what Mrs. Lee 
wanted. 

The Hatfield apartment was crowded and 
private stores of cheer were producing the 
suitable mellow atmosphere. At least twenty 
of the guests had assembled there for New 
Year ceremonies in other years, so there was 


46 


A LINE A DAY 


much talk of old times and getting together 
and one place where you did meet your real 
friends, and Mary Lee, touching glasses with 
five persons whom she had never before 
seen, sang Auld Lang Syne with great enjoy¬ 
ment and a glimmer in the corner of her eye. 
She could not see that the party had led 
anywhere but she liked punch and singing. 
An elderly friend with a borrowed motor 
brought her home, or, at least, to the corner 
opposite her brief end of street. 

“You won’t mind running the half block, 
dear,” she said. “My sister Susie lent me the 
car to come and go in, but she wouldn’t like 
me to go at all out of the way, and the chauf¬ 
feur would be sure to tell her.” There was 
neither apology nor amusement in the ex¬ 
planation; it was a simple statement of fact, 
as though relatives were normally like that 
with their cars, and Mary Lee, jumping out, 
thanked her with the proper fervor, and 
laughed uproariously inside as she hurried 
her silver slippers over the dirty pavement. 

“A little sister to the rich knows all the se¬ 
crets,” she was thinking. “If I had a life to 


A LINE A DAY 


47 


spare, I might play mother’s game—just for 
the fun of it.” 

The Christmas card houses were nearly all 
dark now. The lantern by her door had been 
left lit for her, and there was a light outside 
Walter Lucas’s studio opposite. He always 
left that when he knew that she was out 
alone. She paused on the doorstep, looking 
up into the dark sky, feeling that sense of the 
changing year, of old going out and new 
coming in, that the party had so successfully 
defeated. Then, as she put out her lantern, 
the light opposite was clicked off from in¬ 
side. The quaint little attention was like 
Walter. She went in with a sense that life 
might yet be somehow good. 


CHAPTER III 


Mary Lee’s line a day was the despair of 
her mother. The girl appreciated Mrs. Lee’s 
tact and finesse, and yet here, in the biggest 
crisis of her life, she would not let herself be 
guided. 

“ ‘Had a good time and killed a gopher’— 
that is the way it sounds to me,” Mrs. Lee 
said vehemently when Mary Lee had been 
goaded into showing her the record for the 
first week. The little book lay before her on 
the bureau and she read it through her lor- 
gnon while her daughter meekly fastened 
her satin gown. She was going in great gor¬ 
geousness to the opera to occupy a parterre 
box that had been lent by its owner to a de¬ 
serving cousin who taught music. 

“Here for your opening entry you have 
put down, ‘Met the Capt. Frank Slocums on 
Fifth Avenue,’ ” she went on. “What on 

48 


A LINE A DAY 


49 


earth is that going to mean to your grand¬ 
father?” 

There was a change in Mary Lee. All that 
week she had been in wickedly good spirits. 

“It has to be the most important event, no 
matter how it sounds,” was all she said, but 
some enormous joke was hidden under her 
gravity. Mrs. Lee obviously prayed for 
patience. 

“Frank Slocum was devoted to you before 
the war, but he has been married for several 
years. I don’t see where the importance 
comes in.” 

Mary Lee could not put into words the de¬ 
liverance, the glorious, immortal freedom 
wrought by those ten minutes on a street cor¬ 
ner. Though her love for Frank had decor¬ 
ously died on receipt of his wedding cards, 
its ghost had wailed about the premises ever 
since. He had become idealized into the great 
loss that was to leave her maimed for life. 
When on New Year’s Day she had suddenly 
seen him before her, the universe had 
rocked. And then, inexplicably, all in a mo¬ 
ment, everything was over. Frank was very 


50 


A LINE A DAY 


nice and he had married a nice girl—they 
had a pleasant talk, but the man didn’t mean 
to her anything whatever. He seemed young 
—not as Walter was, with immortal child¬ 
hood, but boyishly, even—ah, love!—tire- 
somely young. To visit them in their new 
home, as they urged, would simply bore her. 
She had come away dazed, feeling for her 
ancient sickness and finding nothing but the 
best of health; and she had been so full of 
laughter ever since that no subject was safe. 

“Seeing him again was very instructive,” 
she said. “And I’ve got a grand line for the 
next day.” She read it over her mother’s 
shoulder: “‘Auction at the Cheevers’, won 
$2.20.’ Grandfather ought to be pleased to 
death by that.” 

“He is quite as likely to be shocked to 
death.” Displeasure took a haughty tone 
when Mrs. Lee was in evening dress. “I wish 
you had not written it in ink. ‘3rd. Poured 
tea and helped land a kid portrait.’ That is 
vulgarly expressed and also misleading. I 
am painting little Gladys Hudson entirely for 
my own pleasure. It is not a commission.” 


A LINE A DAY 


51 


“But we will let the Hudsons buy it if they 
wish,” Mary Lee ventured, a cautious glim¬ 
mer in the eyes that sought her mother’s in 
the mirror. 

There was no answering gleam. “I am not 
at all sure that I will. I may want to keep it 
for exhibition.” Mrs. Lee said that so strong¬ 
ly that she believed it. “ ‘4th. Spent the 
afternoon in the Museum with Walter Lu¬ 
cas.’ Well—the Museum is all right. Why 
drag in Walter?” 

“It was he who dragged me in,” Mary Lee 
explained. “We had a wonderful time with 
the Etruscan tombs. He knows such a lot 
about—” 

Mrs. Lee was not interested in what Wal¬ 
ter knew. “And look what you have put 
down for the 5th,” she interrupted. “ 6 Was 
Happy. 9 That is too silly for words.” 

“Well, I just was, from morning till night. 
It felt important to be as happy as I was yes¬ 
terday, mother!” 

Mrs. Lee’s, “Why?” was startled. 

“Oh, because I had met the Frank Slocums 
and won two dollars and twenty cents and 



52 


A LINE A DAY 

we might sell the Hudson child’s portrait 
and I’d been to the Museum—everything.” 
The truth was there, but imbedded past rec¬ 
ognition. Mrs. Lee’s eyes went back to the 
diary unsatisfied. 

“And to-day!” She expressively closed the 
book and pushed it from her. “Your whole 
future is at stake, and you have put down, 
‘Washed my hair,’ as the most important fact 
of your day!” 

“But what else has there been, except the 
housework and the mending?” Mary Lee 
pleaded. “It has rained all day; I haven’t 
been out.” 

“Then for heaven’s sake go out—make 
something happen! At least stir up an idea! 
Go and see what Julia is putting down!” 

She was so tried that Mary Lee put on the 
family raincoat and tramped off, not sorry to 
escape the inquisition. 

Her dinner was over and the dishes 
washed, but motors with dinner guests were 
stopping before one of the fine old houses of 
the neighborhood. Her mother would have 
crossed the street, but Mary Lee, the rain pat- 


A LINE A DAY 


53 


tering on her umbrella, looked on in philo¬ 
sophical serenity while white slippers passed 
over a red carpet under an awning. 

“I wonder if that dinner will lead her any¬ 
where, and where she wants to be led?” was 
her thought. “Well, I hope she gets sitters 
or suitors or whatever it is. Oh, I am very 
glad I met Frank Slocum!” She wanted to 
carol, there in the rain. Then at the awning’s 
entrance she stopped short, for a taxi, fol¬ 
lowing the car of the white slippers, had set 
down George Murray. 

He need not have seen her. He would have 
gone in without a glance for a passing um¬ 
brella; but Mary Lee would never profit by 
her lucky escapes. 

“Well, how do you do?” she said cheer¬ 
fully. 

He was startled, glad yet evidently a little 
shocked; so anxious to make her feel that it 
was all right, her strolling about in the rain 
at this hour, that she took pity on him and ex¬ 
plained: “I am running over to see Julia.” 

That was a relief. “I wish I could come 
too,” he said heartily. 



54 


A LINE A DAY 


“It looks nice in there.” 

“Oh, yes.” He had a shrug for in there— 
perhaps to make her feel more comfortable 
about not being invited. 

“A lovely, shiny lady has just gone in,” she 
told him. “I hope you will be put by her.” 

“That is kind. I wish I could be put by 
you.” 

“Perhaps some day you will be. We have 
broken into some very nice houses.” She was 
beginning to go on. “What shall you talk to 
her about?” she asked over her shoulder. 

“You might suggest a few good topics. I 
may need them.” 

“You will be late. When you come to see 
me, we will have out all my best topics.” 

“Sunday afternoon?” 

She nodded for Sunday afternoon and 
sauntered on through the storm, exultant 
with pow T er, freedom, a dozen great emotions 
all swelling up at once to make her laugh. A 
strip of mirror in a drugstore window 
presently showed her to herself and she 
stopped for an interested look. The newly 
washed hair was an escaping cloud, a big. 


A LINE A DAY 


55 


waved softness, that made her face look 
small and mysterious and provocative. Set 
in the cave of the umbrella, it might well 
cause a man to be late for his dinner. 

“After all, washing my hair was really the 
most important event of the day,” Mary Lee 
mused as she rang Julia’s bell. 

There was no answer, so, to keep her 
mother mystified, she left a line saying, 
“Come to tea with George Murray Sunday.” 
Then she had to go back to add, “Five o’¬ 
clock.” Julia thought that tea was out of 
place in what she firmly called “our walk of 
life,” and had been known to register her 
disapproval by interpreting it as “supper” 
and arriving promptly at six-thirty. Teach¬ 
ing with Julia was not a matter of classes 
and hours; it was as unconscious and as in¬ 
evitable as breath. 

As Mary Lee turned from the door a sec¬ 
ond time, she found Julia behind her, pant¬ 
ing a little from her bulk and the stairs but 
vigorously cordial. 

“Come in, Mary. Glad to see you. I have 
to work, but I can spare fifteen minutes.” She 










56 


A LINE A DAY 


unlocked the door and turned light on a 
plain and sensible sitting-room, as unadorned 
as herself. There was nothing to launder, 
only a few polished surfaces to dust; the one 
decoration was a fancy lamp with a bent 
glass shade that suggested the first stage of 
scrambling eggs. The tiny bedroom beyond 
was bare and clean as a nun’s cell. Julia’s 
mother lived out of town with a sister, where 
she broke training all the week with defiant 
enjoyment, and then, embracing her daugh¬ 
ter on Sunday morning, realized remorse¬ 
fully how splendid and how dear to her 
Julia was, and wished she had written to her 
senator or not thrown the paper on the side¬ 
walk or whatever it was. 

Julia took one big Morris chair and Mary 
Lee the other. There was nothing to pull 
them up to, so they stayed planted. 

“You do look wild,” Julia said. “Washed 
your hair, I suppose. You ought to wear a 
net.” Julia’s bright brown hair was drawn 
back on the sides so smoothly that it looked 
like satin, but a slightly loosened piece on 
top conceded that becomingness was to be 


A LINE A DAY 


57 


considered. “Oh, George Murray,” she added, 
reading Mary Lee’s note. “Yes, I’ll come. 
But don’t provide any tea for me. I dine 
early and don’t need it.” 

They had had the tea argument any num¬ 
ber of times, so Mary Lee passed over the 
opening. “How is your diary coming on?” 
she asked. “Mother has been giving me fits 
for mine. She sent me over here to learn 
wisdom of you.” 

Julia liked the tribute. “I have so much to 
put down; the only trouble is to decide which 
is the most important event,” she said com¬ 
fortably. “Now to-day I have got hold of a 
girl who has seemed hopeless, a lump—I was 
ready to give her up; and suddenly she 
showed a spark of interest in the Merovin¬ 
gian kings. She asked questions. That is a 
real triumph. And then I dined at the City 
Club with Gertrude Barrett Storrs and sev¬ 
eral others, and we worked out a program—” 

“Don’t!” Mary Lee lamented. “You don’t 
have to be an adjunct to your mother’s pro¬ 
fession,” she added resentfully. 

“Neither do you,” was the strong answer. 




58 


A LINE A DAY 


“You can’t refuse your mother, Julia, when 
she needs you.” 

“Depends on what she is doing.” Julia hesi¬ 
tated a bare second, then let her have it: “If 
it is portraits nobody wants very much—” 
Mary Lee cut her short with unexpected 
vehemence. “That ties you all the more! You 
are not going to hurt her, too. Everything 
isn’t facts, Julia. There are feelings that 
count more than good sense.” 

“I doubt if they should.” Julia meant that 
she knew they shouldn’t. “And if it ends in 
your mother being disappointed in you—” 
“Oh, she likes me.” Mary Lee was her nor¬ 
mal self again, ready to be amused at them 
both, but Julia would not be diverted. 

“Mary, no matter who gets grandfather’s 
money—if there is any—this diary may be 
the best thing that ever happened to you. It 
will make you face just what you are doing 
with your life. You’ve got brains; you might 
have organizing ability. You don’t antagon¬ 
ize people. I know I sometimes do.” Just 
when one was stiffened to hate Julia, she al¬ 
ways weakened one by some endearing ad- 


A LINE A DAY 


59 


mission. “I could show you forty ways of get¬ 
ting your hands on the plow.” 

Mary Lee had risen. “But would the plow¬ 
ing appeal to our grandfather? That is the 
real point,” she said. “We’re miles apart, 
Julia. I want my mother to be happy and you 
want yours to be good.” A wicked glimmer 
reminded Julia that Aunt Sophie lived out of 
town. “I dare say we both have our uses. 
Now I won’t keep you from your work.” 

“You’re not offended, I hope.” Julia’s tone 
implied that that would be silly beyond be¬ 
lief. 

Mary Lee took honest stock of her feelings. 
“No: I’m depressed but not offended. I came 
over here happy and I’m going home sad, 
Julie.” 

“Very good for you,” was the robust an¬ 
swer. “Come in again soon, Mary.” 

“Not on your life!” They laughed and 
shook hands. “Don’t forget Sunday,” Mary 
Lee called back from the door. 

“I put every engagement on my calendar 
and then it can’t be forgotten,” Julia pointed 
out. 










CHAPTER IV 


Mary Lee went back with a heavy step, 
asking herself discouraging questions, ques¬ 
tions of long ago that she had almost suc¬ 
ceeded in forgetting. Laying the ghost of 
Frank Slocum had left her newly vulnerable 
as well as newly happy; she was losing her 
protective sense that nothing really mattered 
very much. Life threatened her with vague, 
new demands. 

“But what can I do?” she cried. Then a 
flickering light at her own windows startled 
her, for her mother would be gone, and they 
lit the fire only for guests. Throwing open 
the door, she found a noble blaze on the 
hearth and Walter Lucas stretched along the 
rug before it. 

“Come in!” he invited her. “Your mother 
has gone off looking like the Queen of Sheba. 
She said that you wouldn’t be long and that 
I might wait, so I brought over my fire.” 

60 


A LINE A DAY 


61 


He literally had, in a coal scuttle that still 
showed embers, and he had drawn up a deep 
chair for her, filling it with cushions. Wal¬ 
ter’s preparations for pleasantness always 
made her think of earnest children playing 
house. She accepted them with an inner 
smile, yet with a sense that homes were sweet 
and that being born men and women was an 
interesting arrangement. 

When he had her comfortably settled Wal¬ 
ter went back to his fire and appeared to for¬ 
get her. His wide brow had never known a 
line, the little agate eyes, set far apart, 
seemed to hold a boy’s long thoughts, the 
fold of his lips had an angelic goodness. And 
yet people had been known to call him a 
limb of Satan. Whatever he was, a record of 
his days would be thick, rich, compared to 
Mary Lee’s. When the inner flame was 
ablaze he would work twelve, fourteen hours 
a day, and a strong, original matrix was 
emerging through the welter of the first imi¬ 
tative years. People were beginning to say, 
“That must be a Walter Lucas,” at the Acad¬ 
emy exhibitions. And when he played he 



62 


A LINE A DAY 


cared nothing for life or limb or public opin¬ 
ion or the next day. His story would be open 
to criticism but it would never be trivial. 
Mary Lee stirred impatiently in her chair, 
and he rolled over to smile up at her. 

“I have been thinking about the diary,” he 
said unexpectedly. He had been told about 
it in strictest confidence among the Etruscan 
tombs. “I wonder if we couldn’t work up 
some rousing lines? Make things happen, 
you know. Stage a crisis.” 

She was dubious. “No grandstand play 
would help with grandfather. He’s fright¬ 
fully clever. He asked for the most impor¬ 
tant thing every day because what is impor¬ 
tant to j^ou describes you, don’t you see?” 

“Well, if my suit would be of any use to 
you— No, I don’t mean my clothes.” He 
crowed with laughter under her expressive 
glance at his shapeless old serge. “I mean 
my young affections. Use them all you like. 
‘Refused a rising sculptor because he is not 
regular in his church attendance.’ How’s 
that?” 

“Unconvincing. ‘Made a good investment 



A LINE A DAY 


63 


and doubled my savings’ would be more in 
his line. I’ve got to do something about it. 
This first week’s record is imbecile.” 

“Mayn’t I see it?” 

“You may not.” She frowned into the fire. 
“I have been hearing straight truth from my 
cousin Julia. I can’t help it, Walter! If I 
had been a boy I should have been aimed at 
something; it would have been, ‘What are 
you going to do when you grow up?’ from my 
first trousers. Instead of that, a little girl is 
always being arranged, made a picture of. 
They pull out her bows and straighten her 
hat and bring a curl forward—they are al¬ 
ways fussing with her. Presently she gets 
bored and won’t stand it, but the first time a 
boy takes an interest in her she goes back to 
it of her own accord—pulls out her bows and 
brings her hair forward and looks in every 
mirror she passes. Looks—looks—how she 
looks—it’s all looks for ladies!” 

He was listening intently, taking it in with 
the sympathetic understanding that made 
him such a good comrade. 

“Tough!” he murmured. “Tell me more.” 





64 


A LINE A DAY 


She wanted to talk. She was hot with pro¬ 
test. “I met a man the other day, an old 
friend. Now, George is not good looking. 
He has a big nose and his ears rather stand 
out. If he had been a girl he would be ever¬ 
lastingly fluffing his hair out to make his 
nose look smaller and cover his ears, and try¬ 
ing to find hats with the right line. He could 
never quite forget them—he wouldn’t go 
swimming because a bathing cap would show 
them up. And he’d always stop at the door 
for a quick rub of powder. But George sim¬ 
ply gets a hair-cut and claps on a standardized 
hat and goes ahead—he doesn’t expect you 
not to like him because of his nose! And you 
would be a fool if it were a barrier. In fact, 
he is quite a conquering sort of person.” 

“The dickens he is!” Walter was resentful. 

“Oh, he knew me when I was a baby. I 
only used him for an illustration.” She 
edged hastily away from George. “And it 
isn’t just bodily looks, it’s every kind. My 
education stopped when I was fifteen because 
we couldn’t afford a private school any long¬ 
er and the high school wouldn’t have looked 


A LINE A DAY 


65 


well. For years I was mad to do something, 
go to work, but I wasn’t talented, and a plain 
job wouldn’t have looked well; and when I 
was old enough to assert myself we had a lit¬ 
tle spurt of prosperity and there were loads 
of men about and I was having such a good 
time that I didn’t think of anything else.” 

“But the war,” said Walter. 

“Yes, the war—I adored that work. I 
thought everything was going to be different 
and serious and big, afterward. But it 
wasn’t. We are horribly poor but we spend 
our lives trying not to look it. My mother 
could have made a fortune as a dressmaker. 
‘Madame Lee!’ How that would look! And 
though I dutifully propose going to work, I 
don’t really want to, now. It is a relief that 
my mother won’t hear of it. Oh, I work, of 
course. But a diary does show me up!” 

“Shows up what you do,” he granted, “but 
it doesn’t show up what you are, Mary Lee! 
And that is what counts. Just to be in the 
same room with you— Gee, it’s good!” And 
he stretched like a luxurious cat. 

She looked down at him with mature 









66 


A LINE A DAY 


amusement. “That, my child, is because for 
the moment you are playing you are in love 
with me.” 

“No. Other people feel it,” he argued. 
“People want to be where you are. And I’m 
not playing,” he added reasonably. “When 
you spoke of that man with the nose, it gave 
me a nasty wrench. Who is the brute?” 

“A friend of Julia’s.” 

Walter settled back. “Oh, well, then he 
isn’t dangerous.” 

“There it is!” Mary Lee fixed him with an 
accusing forefinger. “Julia has got away 
from this looks—looks—looks business, she 
has the courage to wear and do the sensible 
thing, and so you patronize her, you’re scorn¬ 
ful. It is all your fault, this tyranny of 
looks!” 

Walter was never without an answer: 
“Courage nothing! Cousin Julia likes her 
looks, she likes ’em fine. She thinks more 
about looks than you do because she’s always 
thinking what a grand example hers are. 
And she likes everything she does, too.” He 
rose excitedly on one elbow. “It wasn’t cour- 


A LINE A DAY 


67 


age when she told me my Dancing Faun 
lacked spirituality! Striking a blow for the 
right is her favorite indoor sport I suppose 
he didn’t look to her like a good husband.” 

She had to laugh. “Julia’s splendid,” she 
insisted. “She ought to have the money.” 

“I wish it were a free-for-all competition. 
I’d give the old gentleman a line a day that 
would make him sit up,” Walter declared. 

They began inventing his diary, and 
amused themselves so thoroughly that Wal¬ 
ter was still there when Mrs. Lee came home. 
He scrambled up with guilty haste, but she 
was still in the glow of the parterre and she 
treated him with a fashionable gracious¬ 
ness. The neighboring boxes might have 
known that she was a guest of a poor rela¬ 
tion, but the great house hadn’t known it, 
and many an opera glass had lingered on her 
dark grace and her successful gown. A sump¬ 
tuous car had been lent with the box, so she 
had not been jolted back to earth on the re¬ 
turn journey. 

“Come again soon, Walter,” she said in 
kindly dismissal. 





68 


A LINE A DAY 


George came on Sunday afternoon, an¬ 
nounced by the slam of a taxi door, and Julia 
with a strip of Cluny lace turned over her 
coat collar to mark the occasion. Mrs. Lee 
had lit the candles about the walls, a luxury 
usually reserved for possible sitters, and 
swathed herself in floating chiffons. With 
her crinkled hair, black and silver, delicately 
molded, and the fleeting revelations of her 
bare arms as she poured the tea, she looked 
far more like the heroine of the occasion 
than her daughter. Mary Lee had obsti¬ 
nately refused to beautify. 

“Julia never dresses. It wouldn’t be nice 
for me to outshine her,” she had insisted, and 
had come down in a stupid little serge frock 
that any schoolgirl might have worn. She 
was always doing just that sort of thing at 
the critical moment, when everything de¬ 
pended on how she looked. 

“You have no sense of values,” Mrs. Lee 
burst out. “You will put on your white 
georgette for somebody like Walter—” 

“But George knew me first in blue checked 
rompers, and he liked me very much,” Mary 



A LINE A DAY 


69 


Lee argued. She could not have explained 
the mixture of defiance in her pleasure at 
having George come. Her dress was her way 
of making little of him. i 

There was something to be said for this 
looks business. George greeted Mrs. Lee 
with a startled cordiality, and at first the talk 
flowed between the two as though Julia and 
Mary Lee were negligible young people. Mrs. 
Lee would not have not permitted this for a 
moment but for a wholly unexpected hope 
of doing business—something George said 
about his mother wanting a portrait of him. 
Before a possible sitter she became like one 
entranced; she could see neither right nor 
left, she heard nothing but the march of her 
affair. When the ground had been prepared 
she turned on lights and showed George por¬ 
traits for which various pretty ladies had 
consented to sit but which their families had 
not yet bought. 

“I should like to do a head of you; there is 
something significant, powerful, from there 
to there,” she said with frowning, impersonal 
interest, measuring her own head from brow 
to ear. 





70 


A LINE A DAY 


“I wish you would,” was the satisfying re¬ 
sponse. No further approach was necessary, 
there was no struggle to escape. He gave 
his order on the spot as though he were the 
one obliged. It was to be a surprise for his 
mother. Mrs. Lee brought him back to the 
tea table with undisturbed composure, as if 
orders were daily affairs, but there was a 
happy light about her, a smoothing relief, 
that told Mary Lee what had happened. She 
ventured a squeeze of congratulations under 
the table. 

“Julia and I are also here,” she reminded 
George in a small voice. 

“I am very much aware of it,” George as¬ 
sured her with his conquering solidity. He 
made her think of a through express on 
rails; Walter was something that swooped 
and soared in the trackless air. 

“George, what can we do about this muzz¬ 
ling of free speech, putting people in prison 
for daring to think for themselves?” Julia 
began, settling herself comfortably for a 
good tussle with the subject. 

George was guarded, conservative; not yet 


A LINE A DAY 


71 


a capitalist but already on the side of capital 
and serenely sure of his rightness. Julia’s 
free lance attacks on the existing order of 
things could not move him, and, as before, 
he talked for Mary Lee while she leaned 
back and put in an occasional lazy comment 
At the first pause George turned wholly to 
her. 

“You promised to tell me what were your 
favorite topics,” he reminded her. 

“But I have been brought up to talk your 
favorite topics,” she said. 

Mrs. Lee rose. “George, my daughter is go¬ 
ing to be outrageous; I know the signs,” she 
declared. “I can’t do anything with her. I 
will leave you and Julia to deal with her.” 
The mellow light of her happiness shone 
about her as she went away. 

“Shall we encourage her to be outrageous, 
Julia?” George asked, looking for Julia to 
share his indulgent amusement. 

Julia was too honest to do anything but 
look bored. Mary Lee sighed aloud. 

“My mother is a very clever woman,” she 
admitted. “One can defy her to her face, but 




72 


A LINE A DAY 


not behind her nice back, and she knows it. 
What did the shiny lady talk to you about at 
your dinner?” 

He had been to other dinners and had to 
remember. “Shiny? Oh, yes. Oh, I suppose 
she talked what they all talk—the iniquity of 
the income tax and what they have to pay 
their servants. I remember that all through 
dinner she kept one hand on her pearl neck¬ 
lace.” 

“How could the poor lady use her knife 
and fork?” Mary Lee wanted to know. 

“I don’t suppose she could. I didn’t con¬ 
cern myself about it.” George was a little 
lordly. 

“You could have cut her meat for her or 
you could have held on to the pearls,” Mary 
Lee reproached him. 

“How deadly!” Julia exclaimed in right¬ 
eous wrath. 

“No; it was very interesting—a lady with 
pearls as valuable as all that,” Mary Lee 
maintained. “He felt that with tact he might 
become her lawyer. So the dinner did lead 
somewhere.” 


A LINE A DAY 


73 


George was startled, a little shocked. 
“Why, I didn’t think of that. And yet as a 
matter of fact I am looking into a small mat¬ 
ter for her,” he admitted. “She brought it up 
there at dinner, which I thought was in rath¬ 
er bad taste. I keep an office for business.” 

Julia approved and applauded but Mary 
Lee felt depressed. 

“Has the portrait-snatching made me vul¬ 
gar?” she secretly wondered. “Didn’t it once 
occur to him that a pearl-bearing plutocrat 
would be a good client?” 

“Men who use their social life to fish for 
business—” George was holding forth. 

Mary Lee had to cut it short. Of course he 
meant it, and yet it was so exactly what her 
mother would have said. 

“You see, you don’t like it when I am out¬ 
rageous,” she interposed sadly. “And you 
didn’t when I was little, either. I remember 
once I crawled under the card table and 
tipped it over in the middle of a game—it was 
a lovely joke! But you hated it. You pulled 
me out so forcibly that the white stone flew 
out.” 





74 


A LINE A DAY 


“The white stone?” There was no recol¬ 
lection in his face or in Julia’s. 

“You have forgotten it? Both of you?” 
Mary Lee could have wailed over the sor¬ 
rows of youth. “And I have blushed about it 
all these years. I do still—I wake up in the 
night and turn crimson. You don’t remem¬ 
ber how you teased me, Julia?” 

Julia was impatient to get back to real con¬ 
versation—she had a clipping in her hand 
that she wanted to read to George—and 
shook away the question. 

“Oh, dear! It was a flat white stone, and 
on one side I had drawn a speaking likeness 
of George, and on the other I had printed, 
‘Georgie Murray is very nice,’ and I had worn 
it over my heart—well, my pocket wasn’t ex¬ 
actly over my heart, but never mind—for 
weeks and weeks. And it shook out and you 
saw it, and you both laughed and told! And 
you don’t remember!” 

“You came to the silly age early,” said 
Julia, her tone covertly frosty. 

George was looking fixedly at Mary Lee, a 
smile deepening in his eyes. 


/ 


A LINE A DAY 


75 


“I wish I had kept it,” he said. “Was I 
really your first?” 

“Oh, dear, yes.” 

He gave her a reassuring nod. “We’ll have 
to make up to you for that,” he said. 

Julia took hold with a firm hand. “George, 
did you see the last number of Light?” 

“I never see those blatherskite weeklies,” 
was the tranquil answer. 

Julia let that pass. “I want you to listen to 
a paragraph,” she said, and read a fine, slash¬ 
ing attack on the Department of Justice. 
George was visibly restive under it, looked at 
his watch several times and rose as she con¬ 
cluded. 

“Don’t believe everything the radicals tell 
you, Julia,” he said, shaking her hand with a 
large, kindly finality. “I could give you a few 
facts on the other side if I had time. Will your 
mother telephone me about sittings, Mary 
Lee? And will you stay by to entertain me?” 

Julia started. She had not understood 
about the portrait and her astonished com¬ 
ment was so near to bursting forth that Mary 
Lee had to speak quickly: 









76 


A LINE A DAY 


“Keeping the sitters cheered is my main 
business in life. That is how I have become 
outrageous—trying to get some expression 
into their faces.” 

“I’ll bet you succeed,” George laughed, 
and shook her hand again at the door. “I 
like this funny little street,” he told her. He 
seemed to like everything connected with 
Mary Lee. 

Julia was still sitting by the table, down¬ 
cast and silent. She put the clipping in her 
purse and snapped it as though she closed a 
door. 

“Well?” Mary Lee asked. 

Julia lifted sad, honest eyes. “I could 
wake him up; I could make him see. He is 
only ignorant. I could read him things, give 
him facts and figures that there is no getting 
around. But I shall not have a chance.” She 
rose to go. “It is curious: I amount to so 
much more than you do, and yet no man 
would ever listen to me if you were there.” 

Mary Lee was touched, troubled. “Oh, yes, 
they would, Julie,” she exclaimed, following 
to put a comforting hand on her cousin’s 


A LINE A DAY 


77 


shoulder. “All the sensible men would like 
you best. You are worth dozens of me!” 

Julia knew that, but her headshake denied 
the reassurance. 

“If he wants his portrait painted—” she 
began heavily, then went away leaving her 
meaning obscure. 

When Mrs. Lee came down again she 
found Mary Lee seated by the hearth staring 
thoughtfully into the fire. 

“George is very interesting, isn’t he!” the 
mother began. She would not speak of the 
portrait until Mary Lee did, it being her 
theory that such commissions were a matter 
of course in the life of a successful painter. 

Mary Lee looked up slowly, as though she 
came back from far distances. 

“What shall I put in my diary for to-day?” 
she asked. 

Mrs. Lee, gracious with happiness, laid her 
finger against the fire-flushed cheek. 

“ ‘Was stupid,’ ” she suggested. “Why you 
wore that old rag—!” 

“I’d give a dollar to know what Julia is 
putting down,” Mary Lee interrupted. 




78 


A LINE A DAY 


All the evening the diary hounded her. 
The best she could do was, “George Murray 
and Julia came to tea.” Perhaps Julia did no 
better. 

For several days the cheer of George’s 
commission lay on the house. Small expen¬ 
ditures were once more possible: Mrs. Lee 
remembered to buy a new egg-beater and to 
have the clock mended and a dozen other 
necessaries that she had been stupidly for¬ 
getting for weeks past. And then, one bright 
morning, taking in the mail, she found a 
communication from her landlord. 

It was what landlords all over the city were 
writing. The rich could pay, the poor could 
get redress from paternal courts, but the peo¬ 
ple in between, those of small means and 
nice ways, must move. The home feeling 
that might have been growing up for years 
about a modest collection of rooms, until it 
beautified them like a living vine, must be 
cut down overnight and life begun again be¬ 
tween bare walls. Stuccoed studios with 
beams and iron lanterns had taken on a fab¬ 
ulous value, and without that charming 


A LINE A DAY 


79 


background there would be no web to catch 
sitters, as Mrs. Lee knew wearily well. 

She wrote back asking for time to consider, 
and she said nothing to Mary Lee. She prob¬ 
ably did not express even to her secret self 
that there was another hope besides portraits 
and inheritances, and that the girl was more 
likely to charm in her present high spirits. 
She would have said that there was no sense 
in making her unhappy so long beforehand. 
The lease ran until May. 

Mary Lee might have guessed something 
that night if she had not been absorbed in 
the affairs of youth. A struggle with the 
diary had ended with the book flying across 
the room and Mary Lee at her mother’s door. 

“Mother, I am not going to keep that silly 
line-a-day another minute!” 

It was an announcement for which Mrs. 
Lee had been prepared from the first. She 
settled a little more luxuriously among her 
pillows, smiled indulgently. 

“Why not, darling?” 

“Because there is nothing worth putting 
down,” Mary Lee declared. “Besides, it hurts 


80 


A LINE A DAY 


my pride. To try openly for a legacy as chil¬ 
dren try for school prizes! No! I don’t like 
it. I won’t do it. I wonder I didn’t tell him 
so at the time.” 

“Ah, my dear, with an old man who means 
no offense—” Mrs. Lee left the conclusion to 
her child’s good taste. 

“He doesn’t care whether he is offensive 
or not, that old man.” A wicked glimmer 
dawned. “Besides, I think it might have 
worked rather well to tell him to go to thun¬ 
der with his money. I think he might have 
liked it.” 

“You can scarcely go back now and try it,” 
Mrs. Lee pointed out. 

“Julia let me in. She took it so as a matter 
of course,” Mary Lee scolded on. “One al¬ 
ways thinks that Julia is right—at the 
moment. She is so sure of it herself. It 
makes her a frightfully dangerous person to 
have about.” 

“I think Julia was right in this case.” Mrs. 
Lee was as carefully dispassionate as a judge 
on a bench. 

“It doesn’t hurt her pride because she 
doesn’t believe there is any money,” Mary 


A LINE A DAY 


81 


Lee thought it out. “We believe he has mil¬ 
lions, don’t we, mother?” 

“Austin Lee is a very rich man.” Mrs. Lee 
never wavered from that belief. “And when 
you need money, you can’t always afford to 
have personal pride.” Her eyes darkened as 
though they saw the long procession of pos¬ 
sible sitters to whom she had paid court, one 
after another. 

“If we afford a new egg-beater we can af¬ 
ford personal pride,” Mary Lee was begin¬ 
ning, but a flare from her mother’s secret 
cut her short. 

“We can’t afford anything!” Then she 
smiled and amended and smoothed, and 
Mary Lee, touched and troubled, let her have 
her way. 

“Oh, well, a line a day isn’t much for me to 
do for the family fortunes,” she said cheer¬ 
fully. “No one with an atom of sense would 
reward me while Julia was there, but he may 
not have good sense, that old man. We’ll 
land him, mother, if it can be done.” And, 
going back to pick up the diary, she meekly 
wrote for that day: “Have decided to go on 
keeping this record.” 



CHAPTER V 


Mary Lee sat by the gabled window of her 
tiny room, turning the pages of her diary. 

“ ‘George Murray came for sitting and 
stayed to dinner,’ ” she read. “ ‘G. M. took 
us to dinner and theater. . . . Entertained the 
Hudson child while mother painted her. . . . 
G. M. sitting and tea. . . . Movie with Walter. 
. . . . Mrs. Fairfield came again, almost or¬ 
dered portrait. . . . G. M. sitting.’ ” 

“On the face of it,” said Mary Lee, “I don’t 
see anything there that would land a grand¬ 
father.” 

It was beginning to seem serious. Austin 
Lee’s millions might turn out to be thous¬ 
ands, but even thousands would help. Mrs. 
Lee had recently staged a fear of growing fat 
so as to cut down their dairy order, and only 
that morning, looking about the studio with 
an air of bright discovery, she had ex¬ 
claimed ; 


82 


A LINE A DAY 


83 


“How I should love a big room to sleep in! 
Do you know, if some one like Carrie wanted 
to rent my room, I believe I would do it and 
sleep down here.” 

“If you do,” Mary Lee had threatened, “I 
will get a job. A conspicuous one. I’ll polish 
shoes in the Grand Central.” But she knew 
that, even at that, she could not hope to earn 
the cost of the maid who must take her place 
at home. Maids had to have things to cook 
and serve; you could not tell a cook to give 
one of you the chop and the other the two 
sausages. Even Mrs. Lee’s way of doing it— 
“Those were such delicious little sausages! 
If you don’t mind, darling, I am going to be 
selfish and have the last two!” would not 
make it look right. Mrs. Lee had lately de¬ 
cided that the fumes of the bus gave her a 
headache and went about in the packed cars, 
or more often made an excuse to stay at 
home. In all their hard years they had not 
before had to consider between ten and five 
cents. She would never discuss finance or 
say frankly how much money there was in 
the bank. Mary Lee had to find her way 




84 


A LINE A DAY 


through a fog of apprehension, and was 
sometimes rebuked for penuriousness. There 
were many things that “people of our posi¬ 
tion” should have, or must not do. 

“I don’t want the money to shop with,” she 
mused. The years she had spent polishing 
her mother’s treasures had given her an ex¬ 
hausted feeling about possessions. “Oh, no 
more things! I would buy mother some 
pearls, of course—oh, yes, the pearl necklace 
of her dreams. And sables. And a long, 
low, rich car with an orchid in a cut-glass 
vase!” That made her laugh for the sheer 
pleasantness of it. For herself the first gift 
should be freedom: freedom from care, from 
pretense—freedom from sitters! 

“And then what?” she asked, but was di¬ 
verted by a wild clatter coming through the 
open windows of the studio opposite, fol¬ 
lowed by Walter’s high crow of laughter. 
He was making studies of his horse in action, 
and though Ivan did not understand the 
necessity, he was temperamentally ready to 
rear and plunge. 

“Crazy boy!” she said as always, amused 



A LINE A DAY 


85 


and unalarmed. Walter would probably be 
killed one day, but this time he had escaped, 
for presently the broad door was pushed 
open and he came out on Ivan’s bare back, 
holding him in precariously by the halter. 

They were rather beautiful together, the 
two. Walter’s slight body had the strength 
of steel wire and the blown back hair gave 
him a look of the young morning; the splen¬ 
did creature under him spread eager nostrils 
and stepped as lightly as though he were try¬ 
ing to save silver slippers, advancing side- 
wise, as Walter did when he wished to look 
wholly at Mary Lee. 

“But I don’t want to love anybody,” Mary 
Lee protested. “I’m tired of being hurt. I 
want to stay free.” Then, looking after Wal¬ 
ter, she saw George Murray turn the corner, 
and her pulses gave an undeniable leap. 
George had not been expected, yet she had 
broken an engagement to stay in. 

“Oh, botheration—just out of trouble and 
getting right back in again,” she complained 
to the mirror as she pulled her hair forward 
and powdered her nose. 





86 


A LINE A DAY 


Some minutes passed before George’s 
knock sounded. There was time to light the 
fire and fill the tea kettle and set out little 
cakes. He came in as he had come through 
every doorway that life opened to him, big 
and good humored and sure of his direction, 
one of the ruling class. He had a chuckling 
laugh that was endearing. 

“Your sculptor friend is giving a free circus 
out there,” he announced. “He wants to go 
one way and the horse the other. He is get¬ 
ting quite a crowd.” 

She smiled over the crazy boy. “Which is 
winning?” 

“The traffic cop, I imagine. I saw him 
headed that way. Why doesn’t the fellow 
get a saddle and some proper riding clothes 
if he wants to ride?” 

She found him amusing. “George, you 
don’t know the first thing about people who 
live in studios. When we have been model¬ 
ing a horse all day long, we don’t dress up 
to take him over to the stable. We can’t. We 
aren’t thinking in those terms.” 

“Well, if I went on the street with no hat 



A LINE A DAY 


87 


and my elbows out, I shouldn’t have a client 
left,” George settled the matter. “Attractive 
fellow, Lucas; and I like his work; but you 
needn’t tell me he’d sculp any the worse for a 
hair-cut.” 

“He would sculp worse if he were always 
stopping to think about his hair or the holes 
in his sweater,” she began, but he cut her 
short: 

“Oh, they all pose. Don’t be taken in by 
their tricks, Mary Lee. I’ve seen something 
of geniuses—people are always having them 
for dinners. Hindoo prophets and Jewish 
prodigies and Russian poets, and they pose 
all over the place. Every one is bored—ex¬ 
cept the genius. He loves it.” 

“Oh, no, he doesn’t,” she assured him. “He 
is worse bored than any of you. But he says 
in his heart, ‘This may sell my works, and the 
Lord Almighty knows that I can not live with¬ 
out sales, so I must bear it and be grateful.’ 
If he were subsidized by the state, you 
couldn’t get him to your dull dinners with a 
rope.” 

“Then I move we subsidize him,” George 



88 


A LINE A DAY 


disposed of that. “Now your mother is my 
idea of how to do it. She goes to a dinner 
like any lady; it isn’t sticking out all over her 
that she paints.” 

Mary Lee wanted to say, “That’s what is 
the matter with her painting,” but family 
loyalty forbade. “No one who loves clothes 
and parties as she does ever gets very far in 
an art,” she generalized. 

“Your mother paints very well, for a 
woman,” George said tolerantly. “My family 
is going to like the portrait. You must go in 
and see them, the next time you visit your 
grandfather. Mother is very anxious to see 
you again.” He said that with a smiling inti¬ 
mation that had to be ignored if she was to 
keep down a flush. 

“Next time I visit my grandfather!” she re¬ 
peated with scorn. “There won’t be any next 
time. Once was enough for all of us.” 

George was surprised, disappointed. 
“Why, I rather enjoy the old gentleman.” 

“But he lives so outrageously.” Mary Lee 
winced at the memory of that day. “And 
that horrible road up from the station. It’s a 


A LINE A DAY 


89 


disgrace to the village. Why don’t they do 
something about it?” 

George laughed. “Ask your grandfather.” 

“Why?” 

He was making careful selection of a little 
cake. “It is his land, down there,” he said, 
deciding on the chocolate frosting. 

“Simmons Street? Where those loath¬ 
some old wooden houses are?” she cried, so 
distressfully that he looked up in question. 

“Yes. He owns all that tract. He never 
would spend a dollar on repairs, so of course 
it is a slum now.” 

“Oh, no!” She could not bear it. The 
squalid settlement had stuck hauntingly in 
her memory, and to find that it was a family 
possession was like uncovering a family 
crime. “To make people live like that!” she 
exclaimed. 

George pointed out that they paid a low 
rent. “If he cleaned up the houses he would 
get a better class of tenants,” he admitted. 

“And then what would become of these 
people?” 

He shrugged. “They would find some 




90 


A LINE A DAY 


other slum. The factories have ruined Up¬ 
lands.” 

“But to push those people on somewhere 
else wouldn’t settle anything,” she said un¬ 
certainly, feeling her way. 

“No. You can’t settle things like that.” 
George gave back his cup for more tea and 
deliberated between a nut and an orange 
cake. “You will always find dregs at the 
bottom.” 

Mary Lee rinsed his cup as though she per¬ 
formed a symbolic rite. He had finished the 
nut cake and gone on comfortably to other 
topics when she suddenly broke in: 

“George! Suppose in one of those houses 
there were a widow with five children. She 
isn’t necessarily dregs. She has got too hard 
a proposition, that’s all. Suppose she is try¬ 
ing to support them by taking in washing, 
with no conveniences, and not knowing how 
to do good work. Well, suppose you put in 
tubs and hot water and things and encour¬ 
aged her to buy a washing machine on the 
installment plan and gave her points on iron¬ 
ing—don’t you see how she’d come up as well 


A LINE A DAY 


91 


as the house? Suppose in the next house the 
man had tuberculosis and the son had lost 
his leg in the war—they wouldn’t be dregs, 
either. You could—” 

“But the interest on your investment?” 
George brought that phrase down like a club. 
“You can’t mix business and charity. Be¬ 
sides, from what I’ve seen of the Simmons 
Street tenants, I should say they were a 
pretty low down lot of bums. You wouldn’t 
get any gratitude from people like that.” 

Mary Lee was indifferent to gratitude. “It 
is just that places like that hurt so—I’d like 
to get it off my mind,” she apologized. 
“There was a cat there that had given up 
hope—it stared at us from the bottomless pit. 
And to think that my own grandfather is its 
landlord!” 

She told the dire news to Mrs. Lee later, 
but only started speculation about the pos¬ 
sible value of the land. Even Julia’s re¬ 
sponse was disappointing. 

“It could be cleaned up, of course, but a 
bright spot here and there is no use,” she ex¬ 
plained. “We’ve got so to change the eco- 






92 


A LINE A DAY 


nomic order that a Simmons Street is impos¬ 
sible.” 

“But meanwhile that cat is starving,” Mary 
Lee said unhappily. 

“The sooner it is over for a Simmons 
Street cat, the better,” was the robust answer. 
“Don’t sentimentalize the poor, Mary. Lady 
Bountiful has gone up the spout.” And 
Julia’s solid bulk shook over the phrase. 

Mary Lee was discouraged. “I shouldn’t 
know how to be rich,” she confessed. “I’m 
glad that you are going to get the money, 
Julia.” 

“If there is any,” Julia amended. 

“Well, we know there’s Simmons Street,” 
Mary Lee said. 

Walter was the only one who sympathized, 
and he was on Mary Lee’s side of any ques¬ 
tion, her partner in any game she chose to 
play. 

“That would be the real satisfaction of 
money,” she told him, when they had agreed 
on the economic righteousness of a sleeping 
porch for the tuberculous father. “When 
anything hurt, instead of covering one’s eyes 


A LINE A DAY 


93 


and ears and running past, one could say, ‘Is 
there anything I can do?’ You’d dare to find 
out about it. I am sure things stop hurting 
when you have done all you can.” 

“Oh, do they!” said Walter. He lay in his 
usual place on the hearth rug, head pillowed 
on folded arms, but the usual joy at being 
there was dimmed. The young purity of his 
forehead carried a shadow, the little agate 
eyes had the angelic patience of a child who 
has been ill. “I have done all I can about 
that man with the nose, and he hurts like the 
devil,” he went on, looking up into her face. 

She stirred as though she might cover eyes 
and ears. “Don’t, Walter.” 

“I haven’t before, have I?” he argued rea¬ 
sonably. “But to-day I’ve landed a big or¬ 
der—” 

“You have!” 

Applause for his work was not what he 
wanted. 

“Yes; my polo player. Rich gent is going 
to give it to his country club,” he disposed 
of that. “But if it doesn’t mean you, Mary 
Lee—” 




94 


A LINE A DAY 


She started to rise and he obediently 
stopped. 

“All right. I won’t. But what you can see 
in that dub from Wall Street—” 

“Oh, come, Walter!” Her voice indicated 
that there were limits. 

“He’s so new,” he insisted doggedly. 
“You’ve got an old soul, Mary Lee—you were 
Somebody when the Nosey One was proto¬ 
plasm.” 

“He admires your work and thinks you 
very attractive,” she reproved him. 

“Oh, yes. He’ll always do what looks well, 
the proper sporting thing.” Walter was bit¬ 
ter. “‘We do it—we don’t do it.’ Perfect 
gentleman drunk or sober.” He sat up to 
clasp his knees. “He has never seen any¬ 
thing over his head but a ceiling, that man, 
and he never will. For the Lord’s sake, child 
—you don’t have to take me, but don’t take 
him!” 

He troubled her, made her feel as ignorant 
as Julia did when they talked about Sim¬ 
mons Street. 

“What should he see over his head?” 



“Fve landed a big order 












































A LINE A DAY 


95 


“Sky, of course.” 

“What do you mean by sky?” 

Walter dropped back again, looking for 
his meaning somewhere above his head. 
“Well, it’s taking a road even if you don’t 
know where it goes. It’s freedom from— 
from chairs and fashion and what other peo¬ 
ple say. Something that you smell in the 
wind. Being wide open—to whatever or 
whoever may come. Not being afraid—that 
most of all. Do you get it?” 

He was holding open a door, and for a 
startled moment she saw brightness beyond. 
Then a motor honked outside, and Walter 
was only a crazy boy. Mrs. Lee came in like 
an embodiment of well-regulated worldly 
values. She had been to the theater with 
Mrs. Fairfield, their party making an oasis of 
bare arms and dressed heads in a dun audi¬ 
ence. The exquisite pleasure of being 
marked off from the herd still showed in the 
lift of her throat, the sweep of her half open 
evening cloak. Mary Lee saw it with a glim¬ 
mer of mischief. 

“I suppose every one in the house took you 


96 A LINE A DAY 

for terrific swells,” she said when Walter 
had gone. 

Mrs. Lee hated to have things put into 
words—into Mary Lee’s words. “I neither 
Know nor care what they thought,” she said 
loftily. 

Mary Lee made amends by praising her 
mother’s gown; but its grace and the hover¬ 
ing anxiety of their poverty led her into a 
fresh venture in frankness. 

“If you had only gone in for dressmaking! 
Then I shouldn’t have to bother with this old 
diary. You could have called yourself Lau- 
rette if you wanted to keep the Lee out of it. 
And you love the work; you are never so nice 
and gay as when you are blocking out a 
gown.” 

Mrs. Lee, for once, did not snub the subject. 
Perhaps she wanted to settle it for all time. 
She stood at the hearth, a satin slipper on the 
andiron, the velvet and fur of her cloak fall¬ 
ing away from her shoulders, and looked 
about the studio as though it were the rich 
background of a brilliant life. There was a 
good deal of furniture and brass and copper 


A LINE A DAY 


97 


and each piece was what Mrs. Lee now called 
“important.” They used to be “interesting” 
in the prosperous days when she collected. 

“Yes; and what kind of people would Lau- 
rette—and her daughter—know?” she asked 
with significance. 

“Why, Laurette would know all the swells 
in town by this time,” Mary Lee pointed out. 
“Well, then, the quality, the gentry,” she 
amended under her mother’s frown. “Soci¬ 
ety would sit on her doorstep. The great 
would tell her all about their new houses and 
their new husbands and everything. They 
would have to be nice to her, to get their 
gowns on time, or to knock off a hundred or 
two from the price. She would be a person¬ 
age, Laurette.” 

Her mother looked at her enthusiasm as 
though wondering how this came to be her 
child. 

“And does a backstairs sort of intimacy 
like that seem to you valuable?” she asked. 
She almost put up her lorgnon, as they do on 
the stage. 

“Wouldn’t it be better to know them that 


98 


A LINE A DAY 


way than never quite to meet them, this?” 
Mary Lee argued. “One doesn’t get much be¬ 
yond their poor relations, someway—or the 
lonely swells from other cities, or the stodgy 
rich who want people who will talk. We’d 
be rid of all the dull parties that might lead 
somewhere and don’t. Oh, mother, think of 
that!” This was going perilously far, but the 
relief of getting it all said, for once, was 
worth the risk. Her voice urged that there 
was nothing to resent—they were simply 
talking things out, like good comrades; but 
Mrs. Lee would lend herself to no such fic¬ 
tion. She gathered her cloak about her and 
turned to the stairs. 

“You have no more appreciation of what 
has been done for you!” she said bitterly. 

“But, mother dear, I didn’t want it done 
for me —that ” Mary Lee begged. 

Mrs. Lee looked back, hesitated with tight 
lips, then let her have it: 

“Do you suppose for a moment that 
George Murray would be coming to see Lau- 
rette’s daughter?” 

“Well, if he wouldn’t—” Mary Lee’s hands 


A LINE A DAY 


99 


expressed that that settled George. “If I 
were the same Mary Lee,” she added. 

That gave her mother the victory. “But 
you would not be! You are a product—you 
didn’t simply grow.” She turned away again. 
“And even if you were exactly the same—the 
world is like that, my child, whether you ap¬ 
prove or not. Better wake up to it.” 

Mary Lee’s voice followed her up the stairs. 
“I don’t believe George is like that,” she said 
slowly, like one feeling her way. 

“You think that the son of ‘old Doc Murray’ 
has simply walked by chance into all the nice 
houses where George goes?” Mrs. Lee let 
that fall, heavily, then closed her door on 
any further conversation. 

Mary Lee shrugged it away. “Oh, men are 
scarce,” she said, and turned to lock up. 
“ ‘Nice houses’—‘nice people’—” She tried 
over the phrases, then remembered with a 
laugh the serious explanation of one of the 
sitters: “Oh, very nice people—Episcopal¬ 
ians.” In the act of locking a window she 
paused with uplifted arm to wonder if 
George would find that funny. Then she for- 




100 


A LINE A DAY 


got her question, for a step was coming along 
the pavement outside. 

“I’m dreaming—it isn’t!” she exclaimed. 

The lights behind her had been put out, 
the little street lay dark and empty, silent but 
for that assured step. It grew slower and 
quieter as it approached. In the darkness 
she could see a white muffler that meant 
evening dress, a whitish blur that was a face 
lifted toward the upper windows. The street 
ended with their house, but a narrow pas¬ 
sage led on through the block. George passed 
without pausing, as any man might who was 
taking a short-cut to his car. 

Mary Lee tried to be humorous about it, 
mocked valorously against a thudding heart 
and racing pulses. 

“Some sky there, after all?” she silently 
asked Walter as she stole up-stairs. 

Her diary held her for a long time. 

“It has got to be the most important event 
of the day,” she kept telling herself, and so 
at last she wrote it boldly down: “G. M. 
walked past.” Then she hid the book in 
depths of lingerie. 


CHAPTER VI 


In the morning Julia surprised them by 
dropping in. It was Saturday, but she usu¬ 
ally had her hours allotted like a doctor’s and 
left no margin for calls. Mrs. Lee, caught 
darning tattered old linen, made the best of 
the situation. 

“You can’t buy linen like that now,” she 
said, showing its texture. “Mary Lee laughs 
at me because I will go on mending it, but it 
really is too precious to give up. Don’t you 
hate new napkins?” 

Julia was only half attending. “You ought 
to use paper napkins, as I do,” she said, but 
without her usual zeal. 

Mrs. Lee winced, delicately, with her 
shoulders. “Oh, one can’t quite give up the 
niceties, can one?” she murmured with an 
uneasy glance toward the kitchenette. If 
Mary Lee heard that suggestion she would 

101 


102 


A LINE A DAY 


want to take it up. She was always per¬ 
versely ready to slip down in the world. 
There was no need to advertise the fact that 
she had been polishing the kitchen stove, yet 
she came in still in her blackened gloves, 
pushing back the hair from her forehead 
with her wrist. 

“Julia, I may be weak on the Merovingian 
kings and welfare legislation, but I can shine 
a stove with anybody,” she said, taking the 
carved chair that had enthroned so many sit¬ 
ters, and letting her grotesque hands hang 
over the arms. “How on earth did you hap¬ 
pen to come to see us?” she added. 

“My dear, you are rude,” interposed her 
mother. 

Julia only smiled. She had looked a little 
pale and tired lately; the buoyant vigor of 
her attack on life seemed dimmed. 

“Did you know that grandfather has been 
very ill, near death?” she began. 

“No!” Mrs. Lee exclaimed. The same dire 
gravity lay on them all for a moment; then 
Mary Lee cast from her her blackened gloves. 

“If I have bled and died over that 


con- 


A LINE A DAY 


103 


founded diary for nothing—!” she said with 
biting distinctness. 

“How did you hear?” Mrs. Lee asked. 

“A letter has just come from Mrs. Murray. 
It was addressed to mother but I opened it.” 

She gave them the letter and Mary Lee 
read it over her mother’s shoulder. Mrs. 
Murray, kind neighbor, told of a sharp attack 
the night before and a surprising rally. She 
had wanted to send for relatives but the old 
man would not hear of it. He was out of im¬ 
mediate danger and she would keep them 
informed. 

“We must not wish him to linger if he suf¬ 
fers,” Mrs. Lee said, but she might have 
known that Mary Lee would not stand for 
that. She cared nothing for the decencies. 

“I wish he would jolly well linger until he 
has changed his will,” she declared. “There 
was no chance for me, anyway; but I’d rather 
Julia had the money than some silly institu¬ 
tion. We could at least get an occasional 
dinner off her.” 

Something more than the money was 
troubling Julia. She lingered until Mrs. Lee 


104 


A LINE A DAY 


went up-stairs, ostensibly to finish a letter, 
really to make the beds. 

“Are you as dissatisfied with your diary as 
you were?” she asked finally. 

Mary Lee, lying like a broken doll in the 
big chair, head drooped off one shoulder, 
lifted heavy eyes. 

“It is everything that you think me, and 
worse,” she said. “Much worse.” 

Julia’s honesty could not let that pass. 
“Why, Mary, I think very well of you—as far 
as you go,” she explained. 

Her cousin sat up with returning anima¬ 
tion. “I don’t go as far as some girls, but I 
thought that was a virtue,” she said. 

Julia was not paying attention. “Oh, yes; 
you have very good qualities,” she admitted, 
and went back to her theme. “If grandfather 
gets over this attack he will probably send 
for our dairies very soon.” 

“He ought to be pretty strong before he 
reads mine.” 

“I suppose yours sounds trivial.” Julia’s 
troubled eyes sought help. “Mary, I am not 
wholly satisfied with mine.” 



A LINE A DAY 


105 


Mary Lee was touched. “Why not? It 
ought to be a perfect wonder.” 

“I don’t mean from grandfather’s point of 
view;” Julia spoke with a disturbing uncer¬ 
tainty. “As a record of things accomplished 
I am not ashamed of it. But, taken as a 
whole—” 

“There is something left out?” 

“Yes! Or, at least—well, I don’t know. 
Surely there is nothing better than sincere 
endeavor, day by day. And yet—” 

“Julia,” Mary Lee said solemnly, “I think 
this diary may be the best thing that ever 
happened to you. I can show you forty ways 
of getting your hands off the plow.” 

Julia laughed. “You’re an impertinent 
young woman. I dare say I am only tired.” 

“Oh, no, my dear. You are stirring in your 
sleep.” Mary Lee had a wicked glimmer. 
“Sincere endeavor is all right—as far as it 
goes. You need some play.” 

“Now don’t say that I need masculine at¬ 
tentions.” Julia was suddenly irritated. “I 
don’t. I cut that whole thing out of my life 
before I was twenty.” 


106 


A LINE A DAY 


Mary Lee sat very still, that confidences 
might not be frightened off. Julia had been 
handsome before she grew so large; one 
could see it still in her lovely fresh skin and 
fine eyes and satiny bright brown hair. 

“Why, Julie?” 

The memory still roused righteous wrath. 
“Because I couldn’t stand being in the infer¬ 
ior position—waiting to be asked—having to 
toady to pin-headed youths so that I 
shouldn’t lack partners! It was too humili¬ 
ating. I don’t see how any girl of self-respect 
can stoop for popularity.” 

“They stoop to conquer,” Mary Lee re¬ 
minded her. “It isn’t always popularity that 
a girl wants.” 

“For that either. The price is too big.” Julia 
was looking back darkly at old memories. 

“But you must have had suitors in your 
day. Didn’t you ever care?” Mary Lee had 
wanted to ask that for years. 

“Oh, if you call it that. There was—one. 
And I will tell you what ended it.” Julia 
hesitated, then went on with a touching dif¬ 
ficulty. “On sleigh rides and such occasions 
he used to—oh—” 




A LINE A DAY 


107 


“Yes; I know exactly what he did,” Mary 
Lee murmured. 

“I wasn’t flirting,” Julia protested. “But I 
cared and I was young and—” 

“It felt good,” Mary Lee interpreted. 

“And then once or twice, when we were 
alone, I took his hand—I made the advance, 
you see. His Lordship didn’t like it. It was 
infringing on his rights. He turned cool. That 
ended the affair. And it began the ending 
of the whole business for me. If a man 
couldn’t meet me on an equal footing, accept 
it that I made advances as frankly as he—if 
he can’t stand my being his mental equal 
and sometimes his superior—if I have to 
wipe myself out, make myself innocuous so 
as not to antagonize him—if I can’t read him 
things that are vital to me and combat his 
doctrines when I don’t believe in them—no, 
thank you! Not for me!” 

And Julia struck the chair arm with plump 
fists. 

Mary Lee sighed. “Julia, when you talk 
about men, you make me realize just how I 
sound when I talk history, philosophy, art, 
politics and religion.” 


108 


A LINE A DAY 


Julia interpreted with her usual honesty. 
“You mean, I know nothing whatever about 
them.” 

“Not quite so bad as that.” Mary Lee had 
to laugh. “But you talk from the outside; 
you haven’t specialized. You don’t realize 
that the man is doing as much adjusting as 
the girl is. Men aren’t women with mus¬ 
taches who only need a little correction from 
us to be just what we want. Why should 
they be what we want? They’re themselves 
—they’re men . There is one now,” she add¬ 
ed, covering her start by jumping up. She 
knew George’s hand on the knocker. 

He came in with the decorous gravity of 
his news. He, too, had heard from his mother 
of Austin Lee’s serious condition. Julia was 
on her feet and could not be induced to stay. 

“I have wasted half the morning. I don’t 
know when I have done such a thing,” she 
exclaimed impatiently. 

Mary Lee came back from the door with a 
thoughtful eye on George Murray. 

“George, did you and Julia go on sleigh¬ 
riding parties when you were young?” 





A LINE A DAY 


109 


“Oh, yes. Often.” The memory had no 
interest for George. He had come to explain 
that he was going home over Sunday, thus 
breaking two engagements with Mary Lee. 
“My mother says the old man has asked sev¬ 
eral times if I were there. It is only decent to 
go up, don’t you think?” he urged, very anx¬ 
ious that she should not misunderstand. “He 
always seemed to like me.” 

“He is queer,” Mary Lee admitted. 

“Oh, I don’t know.” George paused before 
his own nearly finished portrait. Mrs. Lee, 
accustomed to dealing with pretty ladies, had 
lightened the heavy bar of his eyebrows, 
toned down the big nose, left the ears in 
shadow. “Anybody might like this chap. I 
think your mother is working on my side.” 
He smiled straight into her eyes. “She makes 
you realize what a close shave I had from be¬ 
ing a regular Adonis.” 

“We have to do that w T ith sitters,” she as¬ 
sured him. 

“There is another of her works that I 
want,” George said. “I would rather own it 
than all the old masters put together.” His 




110 


A LINE A DAY 


glance turned with meaning to a head of 
Mary Lee. “I’ve got designs on that,” he told 
her with his conquering nod. 

He was like a through express, announcing 
his destination, and her pulses pounded as 
they had last night at the window. In her ex¬ 
perience suitors usually wanted to begin with 
their hands, to send silent messages of touch 
long before there were words; they floated 
haphazard on their emotions and were as 
surprised as any one when they found them¬ 
selves landed at a girl’s feet. George, at 
lordly ease, kept his hands to himself and 
made his approach by an old-fashioned 
route that perhaps was what they called 
courtship in the days of beaux. It was oddly 
exciting. Of course, she never noticed it in 
words. 

“I wish we might send that up as a little 
offering to my grandfather,” she said. 
“George, can’t you make that old man think 
kindly of me? Even a tiny legacy would 
help.” 

“I suppose he is very rich.” 

“Oh, yes. Millions. There were some fab- 


A LINE A DAY 


111 


ulous oil lands, my mother says. His wife 
got a lot of money out of him just so that she 
could leave it to her children—she knew 
him! Then we lost it, and grandfather nearly 
died of rage. He has never forgiven it.” 

“He asked you and Julia up there,” George 
pointed out. 

“Yes; he looked us over. And if he does 
change his will Julia will get it all.” 

George was surprised, indignant. “Did he 
say so?” 

She could not tell him about the dairy. 
Mrs. Lee had made her promise. 

“There isn’t any question or doubt about 
it,” she insisted sadly. “It is either some in¬ 
stitution, or Julia gets the whole thing. And 
she is worthy of it, George.” 

“Well, I’ll be hanged,” George exclaimed. 
“What could have—” 

Mrs. Lee interrupted, coming down in the 
prettiest of costumes and surprised to find 
him there, though much of what they said 
must have been audible in her room over¬ 
head. When George left, soon after, her 
pleasantness fell from her with a shocking 




112 


A LINE A DAY 


suddenness. Mary Lee, coming back from 
laughing words at the door, found her stand¬ 
ing rigid in the middle of the room, white 
with controlled anger. 

“Mary Lee, are you utterly a fool?” she 
asked, very quietly. 

The girl was too astonished to answer. She 
looked down at herself for an explanation, 
and, finding that all this time she had kept 
on a dingy kitchen apron, she pulled it off 
with a note of apology that was half com¬ 
passion, half a laugh. 

“Yes; the apron was bad enough, with all 
the straining and striving I do to give you 
proper clothes,” the level voice went on. 
“And it was not necessary to suggest that we 
need money. But when you go out of your 
way to tell George that Julia will be your 
grandfather’s heir, a thing not necessarily 
true, you seem to me half-witted.” 

Mary Lee sank into a chair. “I must be,” 
she said. “Mother, you couldn’t mean what 
that sounds like!” She was begging her 
mother not to mean it, but Mrs. Lee was not 
to be stopped. 


A LINE A DAY 


113 


“I mean that we are nearly at the last 
ditch,” she went on inexorably. “The rent is 
eating us up, and in May it will be more than 
doubled.” 

“No!” 

“Yes. I haven’t told you. We are at the 
end of things here. I have given you your 
chance—and you will never know what it 
has cost. And now, when the whole future 
depends on a little sense—you try to throw 
it away.” 

“But, mother”—Mary Lee was suddenly 
vehement—“you insult George!” 

Mrs. Lee turned away with an exasperated 
lift of her hands. “My child, wake up! 
George is a very ambitious man. Even as a 
boy he always went straight for the best. He 
saw you up there, invited by your grand¬ 
father—I don’t say he made cold-blooded 
plans, but it all played its part in giving you 
charm, background. Everybody there knows 
that the old man is very rich. Perhaps in 
time George would care so much that the 
money would not matter, but you can’t be 
sure that he has reached that point yet. You 




114 


A LINE A DAY 


think that you can lean back like a princess 
until life offers you some impossibly perfect 
thing. You’ve got to drop that and take hold. 
I am nearly at the end.” Her voice had fallen 
to a whisper and she leaned heavily on the 
mantelshelf, but neither anger nor despair 
could force her to an attitude unsuited to the 
best society. On her deathbed she would be 
true to her ideal, mindful that her passing 
should be right. Had her little wagon been 
hitched to a bigger star, her steadfastness 
would have been a power in the world. 

A clock struck. Mrs. Lee started, smiled, 
was herself again. 

“My dear, Mrs. Fairfield’s luncheon!” she 
exclaimed. “Run and dress. You haven’t a 
minute to spare.” 

Mary Lee half rose, then dropped back. 
“We have to go?” 

“One doesn’t throw over a luncheon half 
an hour beforehand,” was the firm answer. 
“Hurry, dear.” 

Mary Lee’s very hands felt heavy. Dress¬ 
ing was an intolerable business. 

“I knew most of that before—all but the 


A LINE A DAY 


115 


rent,” she told herself. “I knew that we were 
in a bad way for money and that mother 
wanted me to marry George. There is no 
sense in aching like this.” And yet the ache 
persisted. Her romance was tarnished. 

“Oh, I wish George would come and make 
it feel all right,” was her secret wail. He was 
so fine and splendid and sure of himself and 
his laugh was so endearing. That was all 
nonsense, about the money. The next time 
he looked straight into her eyes and an¬ 
nounced his destination, everything would be 
all right again. “Hurry back, old dear,” she 
pleaded. 

They went through gallantly with the lun¬ 
cheon, though the first five minutes showed 
that it would not lead anywhere. Most of the 
guests came from other cities and lived in 
the big hotels and not one was paintable. 
Their lives seemed to be passed in the 
theaters, and the conversation never strayed 
far from what they liked and didn’t like of 
the season’s plays. 

“Well, food is food,” said Mary Lee in her 
heart, and put away enough to make dinner 


116 


A LINE A DAY 


unnecessary. The mortal dullness served to 
bring her and her mother together again, to 
wipe out the constraint that had been left by 
Mrs. Lee’s outbreak. They walked home, 
Mary Lee funny about the party and Mrs. Lee 
tolerant of her, and many a lady in a limou¬ 
sine looked again to see “who” they were. 
Mrs. Lee was conscious of this and it put her 
in a good humor. Being mistaken for Some¬ 
body has a thrill that passes all the rewards 
of being Somebody, if only the poor lady 
could have known it. 

They found a crowd gathering at the en¬ 
trance to their own street. In the center of 
it Ivan was expressing in circus terms his 
preference for the stable way, while Walter, 
unshakable from his heaving back, was inex¬ 
orably aiming his head in the opposite direc¬ 
tion. The grace of the two, Walter’s gay 
courage, stirred Mary Lee, gave her a swift 
consciousness of what he called sky. The 
ceiling had been so tight over her head, those 
long, lunching hours! She was not in the 
least afraid for him. She wanted to cheer 
when Ivan, still playing every naughty trick 
he knew, moved on up the avenue. 


A LINE A DAY 


117 


“If Walter wants to ride, why doesn’t he 
get a saddle and some proper riding clothes?” 
Mrs. Lee protested. 

Mary Lee had a depressed memory that 
George had said just that. He and her mother 
were undoubtedly congenial. 

“Stop it!” she commanded herself. The 
impulse to tear George to pieces was her per¬ 
verse reaction to the scene of the morning. 
“I must simply stop thinking till to-morrow 
night,” she declared. George would be back 
in time at least to telephone. He had spoken 
of it more than once. His voice would make 
everything happy and natural again. 

George did not telephone Sunday night, 
nor did he call up Monday. Tuesday brought 
a dictated note: he was rushed with work but 
thought he could get in Thursday afternoon 
at tea time. Mr. Lee was up again and ap¬ 
parently out of danger. “Yours sincerely,” 
it was signed. The only gleam of cheer was 
a scrawled initial in place of the whole 
name. 

“Men can’t write letters, anyway. It will 
be all right when he comes,” Mary Lee in¬ 
sisted. She did not show Mrs. Lee the note. 


118 


A LINE A DAY 


simply because it could have been shown to 
any one. It would have made her miserable 
for nothing. Better fold it away like some¬ 
thing that could not be shared. 

The intervening days dragged past without 
a sign from George. He had been coming 
every day, either in person or by telephone, 
by note or flowers. The change was inde¬ 
cently sudden. No rush of work could ex¬ 
plain it. 

“It isn’t that I want to marry him,” Mary 
Lee told the dark, over and over. “That is 
all done with. But I want to know that he 
isn’t—what this looks like. I want to believe 
in him. I can’t bear it, not to believe in him.” 

She was very gay and funny, those three 

y 

days. Mrs. Lee, feigning to notice nothing, 
converted some old velvet into a charming 
afternoon gown—with a little help from 
Mary Lee it could have been ready to wear 
Thursday afternoon; but the girl would not 
see the necessity. She kept on a dark, dull 
frock, and Mrs. Lee had to attend to the 
candles and cakes and to open the door to 
George. 


A LINE A DAY 


119 


He came in big and solid and satisfied, in 
the best of spirits and affectionately glad to 
see them both. Giving him tea, feeding sand¬ 
wiches and cakes to his large appetite, Mary 
Lee cried in her lifting heart, “It’s all right! 
Why, it’s all right!” She could scarcely at¬ 
tend to what was said, she was so exquisitely 
relieved. 

After tea Mrs. Lee was withdrawn by the 
important letter to finish that was always 
awaiting her up-stairs and George lingered 
contentedly, talking of clients and cases, of 
his family and old Austin Lee. It was cer¬ 
tainly all right. Once he emphasized a pro¬ 
test with a “Look here, little girl!” that was 
highly satisfactory. And yet there was a dif¬ 
ference. Before the hour was over Mary Lee 
had to acknowledge that George was no 
longer announcing his destination. There 
had not been one of those meaningful threats 
or prophecies that had stood up thick as mile¬ 
stones along their pleasant way. 

“Oh, it simply happened,” she told herself 
when George had taken a reluctant leave. 
But Friday and Saturday went by without a 


120 


A LINE A DAY 


sign, and though he came in on Sunday, oth¬ 
ers were there and he made no attempt to 
outstay them. He thought he could get in for 
a last sitting about the middle of the week. 

“And that’s that,” said Mary Lee, shutting 
the door on the hearty cordiality of his leave- 
taking and going back to her duty by the tea 
table. 

“Yes, we like this funny little place, but I 
am not sure we shall take it another year,” 
Mrs. Lee was saying. “A house does tie you 
down. With a little pied-a-terre we could 
be free for—” 

So she too had seen, and had given up. 
Mary Lee wrote in her diary that night: “I 
have decided to support the family.” 

“That is the best-looking line yet,” she told 
herself. 


CHAPTER VII 


% 


“If you part from your husband and you 
have no money, you go in for interior decora¬ 
tion,” Mary Lee held forth; “but if you are 
widowed or single when the crash comes, 
you start a tea room. Mother, that seems to 
land us at hot waffles from three to six— 
since you won't hear of dressmaking. With 
cinnamon toast, seventy-five cents.” 

Mrs. Lee recognized a cheering intention 
and was patient. “You have to have capital 
to start with,” she pointed out. 

“We could sell this junk.” Mary Lee looked 
darkly about the twilit studio. “I am thor¬ 
oughly tired of dusting it, anyway. We would 
live in two rooms and eat what the lunch and 
tea people left.” 

“And meanwhile the tea-shop rent would 
eat you.” 

That was so very probable that it left a 
silence. 


121 


122 


A LINE A DAY 


“I shouldn’t mind housework if I were well 
paid for it,” Mary Lee began presently. “We 
both do those things beautifully. If some 
rich woman living alone only knew how 
comfortable we could make her—” 

Mrs. Lee did not consider that sentence 
worth finishing. “George seems to be here a 
good deal,” she said in a voice that was care¬ 
ful not to mean anything. 

“Oh, yes. Regularly twice a week. He 
never misses.” Mary Lee spoke brightly. 
“But I think he is at Julia’s rather oftener.” 

Her mother started. “What makes you say 
that?” 

“I see them together. Walking down the 
avenue. At that concert we went to with 
Mrs. Fairfield last week they were just under 
our box, in the orchestra, having a lovely 
time.” 

“I didn’t sep them.” 

“No: I didn’t point them out.” Mary Lee 
smiled broadly. “And when I ran over to 
Julia’s, night before last, there he was, large 
as life, quite as cordial and affectionate as 
ever. Nice fellow, George.” 


A LINE A DAY 


123 


“I don’t understand you modern girls,” her 

* 

mother said impatiently. “You don’t seem to 
feel things as I did when I was a girl.” 

“We know when we are well off.” Mary 
Lee’s tone closed that topic. “Now, mother, 
you suggest something and I’ll sit on it It is 
your turn.” 

Mrs. Lee’s eyes passed slowly over her 
cherished possessions, then her lids fell. 

“Well, the lease is not up until May, and 
with George’s check we can manage until 
then,” she said. “Something might happen. 
Mrs. Hudson seemed really pleased with 
Gladys’s portrait, I thought. I shall ask her 
to come and see it again, now that it is in a 
better light.” 

Mary Lee’s headshake denied hope. “Put 
not your trust in sitters or in suitors,” she 
said. “Better put it in horses,” she added, 
rising to admit Walter Lucas. He always ac¬ 
companied his knock with a whistled obbli¬ 
gato. 

There was clay on Walter’s shoes and he 
knew better than to come in, thanks to firm 
training from Mary Lee. He looked rather 


124 


A LINE A DAY 


transparent these days but no less celestially 
young. To-night he was flaming with excite¬ 
ment. 

“Please come over, both of you,” he said, 
his eyes on Mary Lee. “I want you to see it 
first.” 

They put on cloaks and followed him 
across the street. Walter’s living quarters 
were up-stairs and his lower floor was a 
stretch of bare cement, its only oasis the 
hearth, where a rug was enclosed by two 
backless benches and a broken-winded old 
sofa. He had always a miscellaneous fam¬ 
ily, living together in a surprising harmony; 
to-day it was down to a German police dog, a 
Scottish terrier, a white Angora cat, two tiger 
kittens and several tropical birds of brilliant 
plumage. One was quite likely to find Wal¬ 
ter playing with a baby lion or luring a young 
bear into attitudes. 

Clay studies of horses filled the modeling 
stands and the polo player was coming at 
them with an arresting sweep, but he hur¬ 
ried them past to a new group standing in a 
blaze of light. It was very much what they 


A LINE A DAY 


125 


had seen on the avenue: the battle between 
horse and man, with man winning. There 
was no hatred between the fiery horse and 
the youth on his bare back: it was a clean 
and joyous struggle for supremacy, thrill- 
ingly alive. Mary Lee spoke in a hushed 
voice: 

“Walter! You have done it!” 

“I have, haven’t I?” He looked simply to 
them both for confirmation of the glorious 
fact. Even Mrs. Lee had to be enthusiastic. 

“Sooner or later, the Museum will buy 
that,” she prophesied. Presently she drifted 
on to the other works while the two sat at the 
feet of the new group and worshipped its clear 
beauty. If she gave notice of her departure, 
they were too absorbed to receive it. Mary 
Lee was startled to find that they were alone. 

“Ah, I’m growing old,” she said sadly, ris¬ 
ing. “My mother would never have left me 
here like this while I was young and attrac¬ 
tive—not even to put on the stew. I have 
had several blows lately, but this is the 
worst.” 


“Blows?” 


126 


A LINE A DAY 


She nodded. “Bumped my head on the 
ceiling, Walter.” 

He had forgotten the word. “Were you 
dancing or growing?” he asked with interest. 

That made her laugh. “You are very satis¬ 
factory,” she said. “Good night.” 

“Oh, stay a little while,” he begged. 
“Please! Your mother is allowing it. I’ll be 
good, Mary Lee.” 

“You bet you will,” was the tranquil 
answer. 

Walter’s high laugh sounded like old 
times, precious old times when they had been 
young and gay together. 

“I wasn’t going, anyway,” she said. 

They stepped over the benches into the en¬ 
closure of the hearth, a small avalanche of 
dogs and cats coming over with them. Wal¬ 
ter threw back the tarpaulin that protected 
the sofa from the dust of clay and paws, piled 
aromatic birch logs on the fire, then settled 
down at Mary Lee’s feet in the midst of his 
happy family. 

“You dream things and dream things, and 
once in a while they come true,” he said, 


A LINE A DAY 


127 


looking up into her face. Something he saw 
there brought a shadow, and he placed a 
kitten on her knee as one might offer com¬ 
fort. 

She held the little creature high in the air, 
to inspect its droll triangle of a face. The 
kitten went through the motions of mewing, 
but its placid spirit produced no sound: it 
was used to finding itself at strange angles 
and elevations. 

“Is this Sweetness or Light?” she asked. 

“Sweetness.” The way he said that was 
open to criticism, from one who had prom¬ 
ised to be good. 

Mary Lee laid the kitten in the warm curve 
of her arm. Wagner thumped a happy tail 
on the floor and Leerie snuggled against her 
foot while the Purrmaid looked on with 
strange blank eyes and murmured content. 
The firelight, flickering on the polo player 
and the young rider, made the background 
seem strangely peopled. Sleepy notes and 
twitters came from the cages. 

“How, Wild Bird,” she said. 

“How,” grunted Walter. 



128 


A LINE A DAY 


“I have come to Wild Bird’s tepee for wis¬ 
dom.” 

Walter found over the fireplace a long 
Indian pipe and deliberately filled and lit it, 
squatted at her feet. 

“The Wild Bird’s wisdom is great,” he said 
at last. “Let Shining Waters speak.” 

“The Wild Bird knows that we of my tepee 
have been painters of images. Now the 
images grow scarce and we must presently 
go forth from these meadows, even to the far 
northwestern lands of Manhattan. And 
Shining Waters must hunt game for her 
people.” 

The pipe fell. Walter’s eyes were fixed on 
hers and he had visibly stopped breathing. 

“Now the mother of Shining Waters is 
proud,” she went on. “Shining Waters must 
hunt game—and yet mustn’t come down in 
the world. Walter, how can I earn our living 
and yet continue to give an effect of being 
gentry and quality?” 

“Then you’re not—” Walter’s voice fal 
tered, broke. “The man with the nose—is he. 
out of it?” 


A LINE A DAY 


129 


“George Murray and I are the best of 
friends,” said Mary Lee, stroking her kitten. 

“But—tell me, Mary Lee!” burst from him. 

She considered what she might tell him. 
“If he ever does enter our family, it will be 
through another branch,” she said at last 
with a dry smile. 

“Hi—i—i!” It was the long rich Indian 
cry that Walter had learned in western 
wanderings. He sprang up, arms high over 
his head. “Hi—i—i!” Cats scattered and 
dogs barked. 

“Sit down, crazy boy,” Mary Lee com¬ 
manded. 

He collapsed at her feet and, taking a fold 
of her gown, kissed it. 

“Let me be glad about it,” he begged. 
“Don’t spoil it. Don’t say a word. Come on 
—we will talk about you and work. We’ll 
find you a job.” The little agate eyes laughed 
and exulted at her as he lent himself to this 
farce of her going out to work. 

She had to spoil it. “You worry me,” she 
complained. “I don’t want you to get your¬ 
self hurt. And I’m tired of love, Walter. I 







130 


A LINE A DAY 


have had two hateful experiences of it. 
Abominable! I don’t like it any more.” She 
started to her feet to get away from the 
whole business. 

“You haven’t tried mine,” he suggested. 

She was not going to try his. “I don’t want 
to talk about it or to think about it,” she said 
vehemently. “There is just one thing ahead 
for me now and that is work that pays. No¬ 
body is happy, Walter. We simply have to 
be gay and go ahead, as you did in France.” 

Walter had his hurt-angel look that al¬ 
ways wrung her, but his words were sol¬ 
dierly. 

“All right. I won’t trouble you. I’m only 
your best friend, Mary Lee. Don’t run away. 
There is so much to talk about. Tell me what 
sort of work you would like best.” 

She sat down again, provisionally. “Oh, if 
I could do what I really want—!” 

“What is it?” 

“I want to rebuild Simmons Street! I can’t 
stand it—that that place of abomination 
should belong to our family! I keep think¬ 
ing what I could do to those houses, with just 


A LINE A DAY 


131 


a little money and some sense. I’m on the 
last house now. I’m sure there is a paralyzed 
father there, and a son who was disabled in 
the war.” 

“Yes; I remember him,” said Walter 
gravely. “He was in my escadrille—a me¬ 
chanic. He never went up with me but I be¬ 
lieve he was a very good fellow.” 

“And the mother isn’t strong,” she contin¬ 
ued. “But they could take lodgers if the 
rooms were subdivided and made decent. 
And that would help the boarding house I’ve 
set up next door—the lodgers could go there 
for meals.” 

“And perhaps the son could learn a sitting- 
down trade,” Walter contributed. “Leg case, 
wasn’t it?” 

“Both legs,” said Mary Lee generously. 
“That is what I want to do—build. But how 
can I build without money? We may have to 
move to Simmons Street ourselves, after we 
have given up being painters and ladies.” 

“Is it as bad as all that?” 

She was not going to have any one grieving 
over her. 


132 


A LINE A DAY 


“Why, we only lack money. That is noth¬ 
ing unusual,” she said gaily. “There are all 
sorts of ways to earn it—I read the female 
wanteds every day. I could be a bonbon dip¬ 
per, I know, or a pants finisher; but my 
mother is so full of objections.” 

“Don’t joke about it—it is too horrible,” 
Walter muttered. 

She laughed at him. “Well, this morning 
there was an opening for a presentable 
young woman to demonstrate a walking 
doll; I suppose you would like that better for 
me,” she said. “Like this:” She took one 
of Leerie’s forepaws, raising him to his brief 
hind legs, and they did a little walk together, 
Mary Lee bending down in maternal solici¬ 
tude, the terrier beaming up at her with a 
silly tongue hanging out. Walter had to 
laugh. 

“Oh, Mary Lee,” burst from him, “you are 
so gallant and so durned fine and such an 
utter darling!” 

“And you are a great genius—we have got 
that settled too,” she interrupted, putting on 
her cloak. 


A LINE A DAY 


133 


“Don’t go!” 

“I must. I have to ask my mother why I am 
not worth chaperoning any more. I can’t 
wait to find out. Now hold on to the family 
—I am going to open the door.” 

She slipped away, but, once home, she was 
careful to ask no questions, and when Mrs. 
Lee, newly content, spoke praisefully of Wal¬ 
ter’s works and looks and charm, her re¬ 
sponse was scarcely gracious. 

Her diary that night was harder than ever. 
No matter how deep her experiences were, 
they never offered data that would mean 
anything to a grandfather. At last, in exas¬ 
peration, she wrote, “I don’t want to love any 
one,” which was, after all, the outstanding 
fact of the day. 

Mary Lee told every one with unadorned 
plainness of her need for work, and Mrs. Lee 
could only deplore this restless age, wherein 
home life no longer satisfies a girl’s needs. 
Mary Lee even had the dubious taste to speak 
of it before George Murray. There had been, 
as yet, no faintest break in her friendliness, 
no shade of withdrawal. George had every 


134 


A LINE A DAY 


right to believe that his change of direction 
had not been noticed. Mary Lee’s habitual 
candor was a matter of choice, not of neces¬ 
sity, and for once her mother could thor¬ 
oughly approve her bearing. The girl could 
show perfect taste when she wished. 

His advice demanded, George looked at 
her amusedly. 

“Do? For a living?” he asked, all ready to 
laugh. “Are you serious?” 

Mary Lee, sitting on a low stool by the fire, 
looked up to nod. “The wolf is at the door,” 
she told him. “He has always been there, 
but I thought he was a sort of studio decora¬ 
tion. Almost every artist keeps a wolf, to 
chase him if he begins to slack. I’ve joked 
with ours just as I might with you. I sup¬ 
posed he was really our guardian angel 
dressed up in a doormat. And now, all at 
once”—her voice dropped and she glanced 
over her shoulder—“he turns out to be a 
ravening landlord. And so I’m looking for 
work.” 

George’s chuckling laugh shook his big 
shoulders, and his eyes, beaming down on 


A LINE A DAY 


135 


her, seemed to say things that his speech no 
longer endorsed. 

“You want a real, honest-to-goodness job, 
do you!” he said, and laughed again. 

“But I have normal intelligence,” she pro¬ 
tested. “I might be worth a few dollars a 
week. I’m no Julia, but there must be little 
Mary Lee positions somewhere.” 

“Julia is fine, isn’t she!” George spoke 
without a trace of self-consciousness. “Per¬ 
fectly wrong-headed in some ways, but she’ll 
outgrow all that radical bosh. I have been 
seeing a good deal of her,” he added with a 
simplicity that put a serious strain on Mary 
Lee’s endurance. 

“Julia will make such good use of grand¬ 
father’s money when it comes to her,” she 
said, innocent eyes lifted to his face. “She 
will be splendid as a rich woman—don’t you 
think?” 

He had the grace to be visibly embar¬ 
rassed, and he got away from that aspect of 
Julia as quickly as possible. 

“Oh, she is just as fine and happy without 
money,” he said hastily, and Mary Lee could 


136 


A LINE A DAY 


have sworn that he had changed color. “Now, 
about this famous work that you are going to 
do-” 

He continued to find it the best possible 
joke, but Mary Lee purposely grew absent. 
Pauses fell, increased. George had to work 
to keep the conversation going. 

“You are tired, little girl,” he said at last. 

The phrase was no longer satisfactory. 

“Not in the least,” said Mary Lee pleas¬ 
antly, and again silence fell. 

“I love to come here,” George began again. 

“You can’t do it much longer,” said Mary 
Lee, and left him stricken for a long moment 
before she added, “We are going to move in 
May.” 

George thought it would be hard to find 
anything half as nice as this and Mary Lee 
dryly agreed. The pauses, growing longer, 
finally drove George to his feet, but he lin¬ 
gered interminably over the leavetaking. 
When at last she could shut the door she 
leaned exhaustedly against it. 

“Another moment and I would have told 
that man exactly what I think of him,” she 



A LINE A DAY 


137 


stated. “I wish he would stop coming here.” 
The fact that his handclasp had been a little 
wistful, humble even, begging for something 
unexpressed, made her resentment burn 
hotter. 

“Keeping me on in case there is a slip-up,” 
she decided. “This can’t go on. I will tell 
the whole thing to Julia—and then she can 
do what she pleases. I know what I would 
do!” 

She started for Julia’s that evening, re¬ 
membering another night when she had run 
over in the rain and George Murray under 
an awning had set all the drums of life to 
beating. And she was destined to see him 
again to-night, for at a corner of the avenue 
Julia, with the strip of white Cluny over her 
coat collar, was being handed into a bus by 
George himself. In the bright interior she 
could see Julia’s face, and it seemed to her 
alarmingly happy. 

“And I’ve got to tell her,” said Mary Lee, 
going heavily home again. 

The next day was Sunday and Julia went 
off early to spend the day with her mother. 



138 


A LINE A DAY 


Mary Lee planned to drop in on her for 
breakfast Monday morning—if a person’s 
faith in man had to be shattered, one hour 
of the day was as good as another; but both 
she and her mother slept late, and before 
they had come down Julia was at the door. 
She was a new Julia; or perhaps it was the 
old Julia quickened, intensified, more cer¬ 
tain of her splendid course. Mary Lee, open¬ 
ing windows, saw her coming and longed to 
run away. 

“If George could take me in, what couldn’t 
he do to poor old Julia!” was her secret cry 
as she hurried down. “What hasn’t he 
done!” she amended mournfully as her ear 
caught the caroling note in Julia’s greeting. 
She could have wept on her cousin’s solid 
shoulder. 

“I suppose you got one,” said Julia, dis¬ 
playing a letter. 

Mary Lee turned to the mail. Austin Lee’s 
little crooked writing was there for her, too. 
The letters were identically the same: 

“If you care to mail to me your diary, I 
am prepared to look it over with an open 


A LINE A DAY 


139 


mind. I warned you that it was a gamble. 
Considerations of which you know nothing 
will affect my decision. I would advise a 
prompt response, as I am not in the best of 
health.” And he was “Sincerely” theirs. 

Julia had her diary in an open envelope 
and had stopped for Mary Lee’s. 

“They might as well go together. I can 
drop them at the post office,” she said 
briskly. 

Mary Lee sank down on the stairs. 

“I can’t let him see it,” she lamented. “Tell 
him yours is from us both, with love and best 
wishes.” 

Julia laughed easily to-day. “Don’t be a 
goose, Mary. I don’t really expect anything 
myself, but it will be interesting to see his 
reactions.” 

“You know you’ll get it!” 

“I know nothing of the kind. And I really 
don’t very much care.” Julia was obviously 
sincere, and Mary Lee’s heart died within 
her. 

“Then what is putting you in such good 
spirits?” she asked, her eyes averted. 


140 


A LINE A DAY 


“Oh, I like my life. Hurry up, child, I must 
get to school.” 

Mary Lee brought the diary and sealed the 
envelope herself. 

“I’d rather die than have you see it,” she 
confessed. 

“I could show you every page of mine,” 
Julia boasted. “Oh, good morning, Aunt 
Laura,” she added as Mrs. Lee came down in 
a pretty morning frock. She had amended 
her toilet as carefully as though Julia were a 
possible sitter. 

“Can’t you stay for a cup of coffee with 
us?” she urged. 

Julia did not drink coffee and was con¬ 
vinced that no one else should. She advo¬ 
cated her own unvarying breakfast with the 
old-time zeal, and lingered on the doorstep 
to set forth the well-chosen stages and pro¬ 
cesses of her morning bath, a model for all 
bathers to follow. The blithe vigor of her 
step as she turned away was almost a swag¬ 
ger; her sensible heels pushed at the pave¬ 
ment. 

“Oh, it was not fair to fool Julia!” was 


A LINE A DAY 


141 


Mary Lee’s inner wail. Then she had to open 
the door again. Julia was back, accompany¬ 
ing a telegraph boy. 

“I just thought I would see—” she apolo¬ 
gized. 

The message was from Mrs. Murray. Aus¬ 
tin Lee had died in the night. 

Mary Lee took the package from Julia’s 
hand, extracted her diary and, tearing out 
the written sheets, burned them on the 
hearth. 

“It would have been a better gesture to 
burn the whole thing, but we have to be 
thrifty now,” she said. “The rest of it will do 
for a laundry book.” 

Mrs. Lee’s body had sunk on the nearest 
chair, but her spirit was bravely erect. 

“Have you black things to wear to the fun¬ 
eral, darling?” she asked. 

“No,” said Mary Lee, with a vigor that 
closed the subject. 

“I would not wear black for my own moth¬ 
er,” Julia held forth. “I don’t express my 
feelings by millinery. To me a woman in a 
crepe veil—” And then, remembering the 


142 


. A LINE A DAY 


torrent of black that had marked Mrs. Lee’s 
widowhood, she had the grace to break off. 
“It is so hot,” she ended weakly. She could 
have finished with impunity. A Patagonian’s 
opinion on social matters would have had as 
much weight as poor Julia’s, to her Aunt 
Laura. 

“You girls must think a little of the village 
people,” she said gently. “You don’t want to 
seem to them lacking in respect. For all his 
queerness, he was your—” She broke off, 
startled by a new idea. “Did he seem to you 
wholly in his right mind?” she asked with a 
hesitating delicacy. 

Her daughter ended that hope with a firm 
hand. “He certainly did. You couldn’t break 
his will with an ax.” 

“Money doesn’t matter very much if you 
like your work,” Julia said, and went off 
with returning cheer. 

Mary Lee looked after her in sorrow and 
anger. “Well, George will be out of suspense 
very soon now,” she said to herself. “I might 
forgive him for me, but never for Julia!” 


CHAPTER VIII 


That George was suffering a misery of ner¬ 
vous suspense was evident to Mary Lee from 
the moment he met them at the station plat¬ 
form. Like kind country neighbors every¬ 
where, he and his family had done all that 
could now be done for Austin Lee. He had 
brought a big car to the station; but there 
were only three to fill it, for Julia’s mother 
was not well. He greeted them with a start¬ 
ling incoherence and, sitting with the chauf¬ 
feur, left them to themselves. Passing the 
dreary length of Simmons Street—never now 
to be rebuilt!—and going through the ordeal 
of the funeral, Mary Lee kept up her spirit by 
pelting George with secret mockeries. He 
was actually white, so bodily strained that 
his hands trembled; and that he kept away 
from Julia as well as from herself filled her 
with bitter amusement. They lunched with 

143 


144 


A LINE A DAY 


Mrs. Murray and “the Murray girls,” as 
George’s two elder sisters would be called 
to the end of their vigorous spinster days, but 
George found an excuse to be absent from 
the table. 

“He isn’t going to miss the will, anyway,” 
was Mary Lee’s comment, when after the ner¬ 
vously cheerful meal that follows a funeral 
they found him waiting in the library. 

Mr. Hanks, Austin Lee’s lawyer for the past 
forty years, slowly put on spectacles and 
took out a brief document. There were only 
the three relatives and George in the pleas¬ 
ant, homely old room. Mary Lee laid a com¬ 
forting hand on her mother’s. Julia settled 
herself with brisk, impersonal interest. 
George stayed over by the window, his back 
to them all. 

Mr. Hanks had to make a little speech 
about his long connection with Austin Lee. 
As he lifted the document, Mary Lee felt her 
mother’s hand quiver, and smiled at her, a 
smile that said, “We don’t mind! We’ll 
manage!” 

The will was only a few lines. There were 



There were no legacies, no last kindnesses. 















■v 


















V. 







» 






A LINE A DAY 


145 


no legacies, no last kindnesses. Austin Lee 
was in his sane mind and he left everything 
of which he died possessed to the New Eng¬ 
land college from which he had graduated, 
fifty years before. A curt postscript ex¬ 
plained that his descendants had been well 
provided for during his lifetime and would 
receive nothing more. 

A hush followed the reading of the date. 
By the sudden iciness of her mother’s fingers, 
Mary Lee knew how hard hope had died, and 
tried to make her clasp feel like a strong 
promise. Then she was aware that George 
had risen to his feet. 

“That will was drawn up fifteen years ago,” 
he said with a difficulty that made the words 
momentous. “You don’t know of any later 
will?” 

Mr. Hanks was sure that no other will had 
been made. He had tried more than once to 
remind his client of the claims of blood; but 
Mr. Lee was a peculiarly self-willed man and 
such suggestions had always caused irrita¬ 
tion. 

“I think I was the only person whom Mr. 


146 


A LINE A DAY 


Lee admitted to his confidence in business 
affairs,” Mr. Hanks was gently boasting when 
George broke in: 

“I witnessed a will for him not two months 
ago.” 

The three women had turned startled faces 
to him, but he was careful to see no one but 
the offended little old man. 

“It was that time he was so ill,” he went on. 
“I came up over Sunday and he consulted me 
about it.” 

“You have a copy?” Mr. Hanks spoke stif- 
even suspiciously. 

“No. It was all in his own handwriting. 
The housekeeper and I witnessed it.” 

“You could state its provisions?” 

“Yes.” 

“Perhaps we would better make a search 
for this new will before it is discussed,” Mr. 
Hanks was beginning, but Julia broke in. 

“You might as well tell us, George,” she 
said, and her cheerful every-day voice was a 
thing to be grateful for in that strained at¬ 
mosphere. 

“Of course he may have destroyed it,” 


A LINE A DAY 


147 


George said. “It was very short. It said: ‘I 
leave everything of which I die possessed, 
amounting to about five million dollars, to 
my granddaughter, Mary Lee.’ Mr. Hanks 
was named executor.” 

Mary Lee passed her hand over her eyes, 
trying to wake herself up. 

“But, of course, it doesn’t mean me,” she 
faltered. Then she saw that it must be true, 
for her mother had fainted. 

Mrs. Lee, restored, was tucked up in a 
darkened room, where she sobbed into the 
pillow that she wanted to be alone. 

“Just until I can pull myself together, dar¬ 
ling,” she gasped, as ashamed of her emotion 
as she would have been of public ill-temper 
or any other social lapse. 

Mary Lee had no tears. There was some¬ 
thing on her soul more engrossing than her 
fortune, something that must he attended to 
at once. She went back to the others and 
met their congratulations with a limp hand 
and inattentive eyes. 

“I have got to speak to George,” she inter¬ 
rupted them. 


148 


A LINE A DAY 


Julia rose, laughing and objecting. She 
was so genuinely glad for Mary Lee that the 
latter would love her for it—as soon as this 
question was settled. 

“She is acting like a millionaire already,” 
Julia said as they all filed out, leaving her 
alone with George. He had not tried to con¬ 
gratulate her. 

“George”—she flung it at him—“have you 
known it all along—that I was the one?” 

He nodded. 

“Ever since that Sunday?” 

“Yes.” 

“I don’t understand!” But she was begin¬ 
ning to, and a flush swept up to her fore¬ 
head. She dropped into a chair and leaned 
an elbow on the table, that she might shield 
her face. “Tell me about it. How it hap¬ 
pened. Sit down and tell me everything.” 

George took a chair at a sober distance. 

“I came up here, you remember?—when 
he was so ill. He asked me to look over a 
new will. That’s all.” 

“And then you came back and dropped 
me, hard,” she accused him from behind her 
hand. 


A LINE A DAY 


149 


“My dear girl, in decency and honor, what 
else could I do?” 

“Simply because I was going to be rich?” 

“And didn’t know it! There was nothing 
for me but to draw back and wait.” 

“But what you felt for me was real, 
George ?” 

“Real!” He started from his chair, then 
resolutely settled back into it. “It was the 
realest thing in my life. From the very first 
day.” 

“Then you thought having money would 
change me? That I might care for you when 
I was poor and wish I hadn’t when I found 
I was rich?” 

Put like that, nakedly, it was a thing to 
hate and deny. “I simply had no right to go 
on,” he insisted. “Suppose I had—how 
would it have looked when the truth came 
out! I have been boring Julia to death,” he 
added with a ghost of his old laugh. “I had 
to go somewhere where I could talk about 
you.” 

Mary Lee’s doubled fists smote the table. 
“Oh, 1880!” she blazed. 


150 


A LINE A DAY 


“What?” 

“Eighteen-eighty—that is what it sounds 
like to me. You cared, really; but you drew r 
back and pretended you didn’t and hurt me to 
the bone, because it might look mercenary to 
some one else! Looks—looks—what the 
world might think—I hate that silly old-fash¬ 
ioned honor! I want reality!” 

He was utterly bewildered. “But you 
knew that I loved you,” he began. 

“Oh, we never know it certainly; we can’t 
know it when you seem to deny it. I have 
thought ugly things of you, and something 
real that was beginning is dead—it’s utterly 
dead. And you have done more harm than 
you will ever know. Looks—looks—you’re 
as bad as my mother. I can’t live like that— 
everything taken for how it looks rather than 
for what it is.” 

George was unshakable. “There are things 
a man doesn’t do,” he said. 

Mary Lee thought of Julia with her brave 
new happiness. “Not many,” she muttered 
and, dropping her forehead into her hands, 
stared silently at the new situation. Under 


A LINE A DAY 


151 


the chaotic surface a little stirring of joy be¬ 
gan to make itself felt, not yet because of her 
fortune, but because a man had not been 
base. The old stupid had meant so well! 
Presently she looked up at him with a wan 
smile. 

“It really would be easier if I had fainted,” 
she said. “Then I could come back to it grad¬ 
ually. Now it is all rushing at me at once. It 
is amazing, George! Here you are a per¬ 
fectly good sort, after all, and I am the heir¬ 
ess. But why did he leave his money to me? 
Do you know?” She asked it at random out 
of her general astonishment, but in the pause 
that followed it was suggested to her that 
George did know. There was something con¬ 
scious in the way he crossed his knees and 
cleared his throat. 

“But why not?” he asked, studying the 
backs of his hands. 

“Did you have anything to do with it?” 

“Nothing.” 

“You didn’t say to him that Mary Lee was 
deserving?” 

“I didn’t mention your name.” 


152 


A LINE A DAY 


Mary Lee began to see light. “He has al¬ 
ways liked you,” she said, feeling her way. 
“You are a careful, solid sort of citizen who 
could be trusted not to waste a fortune. I see 
—I’m getting it.” 

George moved uncomfortably. “My dear 

girl-” 

She stopped him with a lifted hand. 
“Wait! He watched us that day, I saw him. 
You were glad to see us, we were all rather 
enthusiastic. He watched us like a cat, and 
he got a new idea about leaving his money. 
And that is why he had you witness the will 
—he thought he was going to clinch matters. 
So that you could be on the ground first, and 
secure the heiress. It was his way of making 
you his heir!” 

“Yes!” The truth came explosively. “He 
had known me all my life, and he thought 
that of me!” 

“Poor George! Everybody has been think¬ 
ing things about you,” she said ruefully. “Did 
he say anything about it?” 

“Not in words; but it was in his crafty old 
eyes every moment—especially when he 


A LINE A DAY 


153 


added in that ‘amounting to about five mil¬ 
lion dollars.’ He almost licked his chops 
over it. I could have smashed him. He 
couldn’t understand to save his neck why it 
had all stopped short.” 

“He found that out?” 

“I told him in good straight English. It 
was last Sunday, the day before he died. He 
began hinting round the subject, and I told 
him that he had tied my hands. He was so 
angry I thought he might make another will. 
I know he wrote to both you girls. And then 
he died in the night.” 

“And if he had lived a few days more Julia 
might have had it all. I wish Julia could 
have something good.” Mary Lee started to 
her feet. “I don’t believe I forgive you, 
George. Now I must go back to mother.” 

He rose to open the door for her, then 
paused, his hand on the knob. “I couldn’t 
have acted differently—you will see it when 
you think it over,” he said from the old as¬ 
sured height. “Now things are open and 
aboveboard and I’m going to win you if I 
can, Mary Lee.” His nod was a loving threat. 


154 


A LINE A DAY 


She was suddenly near tears. “No—no,” 
she protested and fled. 

The will was not found in Austin Lee’s 
desk; but the big pigeonhole cabinet was 
stuffed with papers and closets showed docu¬ 
ments heaped to the ceiling. The old man 
had hoarded every scrap of paper, as he had 
every dollar of his life. Mr. Hanks had to 
leave at five, and as he would not allow the 
search to go on without him there was noth¬ 
ing to do but to return to town, and there was 
nothing now that Mary Lee could tell Julia; 
at least, there was no villain to be unmasked. 

“She will see it in time for herself. And 
then she will have to go through all those 
months and years of flat emptiness—as I did 
over Frank Slocum,” she grieved. “Nothing 
worth the trouble of doing it. Oh, we really 
do waste a lot of strength over this everlast¬ 
ing love business!” 

Julia’s voice broke in: “You don’t seem 
very uplifted for an heiress!” 

Mary Lee answered soberly: “Julie, I want 
to give you a million or so.” 

“I’ll help you dispense it,” Julia offered. 


A LINE A DAY 


155 


“Dispense it?” Mary Lee repeated vaguely. 
“Dispense—?” Suddenly she leaned for¬ 
ward. They were passing through Simmons 
Street, where once she had shut her eyes: 
now she studied each forlorn house as 
though she took its mental photograph. 
When she faced them again the light in her 
face made Julia laugh. 

“Now you look more like it,” she said. 

On the way down she discoursed very 
sagely about the right use of wealth, while 
Mrs. Lee hid behind her eyelids and the heir¬ 
ess dreamed and marvelled. 

The first breath of spring was on the city, 
the grass in the squares was new green. 
Lights shone in the little Christmas-card 
houses as Mary Lee and her mother came 
home. Opposite the last house Mary Lee 
stopped. 

“I must tell Walter,” she said. 

Mrs. Lee demurred. “Oh, there is plenty 
of time to tell Walter.” 

“I want to tell him now.” 

“He is a dear boy”—Mrs. Lee spoke indul¬ 
gently—“but you have a new world before 


156 


A LINE A DAY 


you, darling. I wouldn’t see too much of 
Walter.” 

Mary Lee smiled understandingly. “I’m 
not in love with anybody, mother, and it 
doesn’t matter now whether I marry or not— 
oh, I like that! But, if Walter loved me, he 
wouldn’t care whether I turned out to be an 
heiress or a ragman’s child; he would go 
right on loving me at the top of his lungs.” 

‘‘George has acted like an honorable gen¬ 
tleman,” Mrs. Lee insisted. 

“Eighteen-eighty model. It was a good ma¬ 
chine in its day,” said the irreverent child of a 
new age. “But Walter is so nice to tell things 
to! I won’t stay a minute.” She crossed the 
road and lifted the knocker. 

“How, Wild Bird,” she said to the opening 
door. 

“How, Shining Waters!” 

There was no stoic Indian about Walter’s 
greeting, and the lavish welcome of the dogs 
made it seem a homecoming. The bare place 
with its shadowy, plunging horses deepened 
her breath as though she had stepped out 
under a great sky. 


A LINE A DAY 


157 


“Ah, I like it here,” she exclaimed. 

“I like you here!” 

Walter was clearly not going to be good, 
yet she came in and let him lead her to a fire¬ 
side bench. He sat with a knee clasped so 
that he might turn wholly toward her. The 
kittens began to show off in wild gambols, 
the Purrmaid sat aloof and stared strangely, 
but the dogs brought their love to her feet, 
pressed it against her knees. 

“I never had a dog,” she said, and the 
knowledge that she might now have such a 
friend for her own put new richness into her 
voice. She drew the Scottish terrier to the 
bench beside her and made him rapturously 
happy with her encircling arm. 

“Have Leerie,” was the instant answer. 
“Please, Mary Lee. He’s a good little fellow 
—he won’t smash the antiques.” 

She only smiled. Her thoughts had taken 
a new jump. “I never supposed I should 
want to go to Europe again,” she said. “I 
have remembered traveling as eternal worry 
—everything costing just a little more than 
you had counted on—doing your own laun- 


158 


A LINE A DAY 


drying in hotel bedrooms and hiding it if a 
bellboy knocked—killing your appetite with 
chocolate and biscuits—trying to look first 
class on a third-class ticket—refusing to 
know any one who was not distinguished and 
so being frightfully lonely—oh, hateful! And 
yet to see far countries, really to see them, 
not just see their sights-” 

“Poppies in the wheat,” Walter inter¬ 
preted. “A nightingale in a stone-pine. I 
could show you things!” 

The sky over her head was growing wider 
and deeper; she had a vision of soaring off 
into it. 

“I saw Simmons Street to-day;” she was 
trying to come to her news and finding it 
oddly hard. “Walter, there was a lame sol¬ 
dier.” 

“Good old Bill. I must look him up.” 

“There is about two blocks of it,” she went 
on. “Squalor in the heavenly clean coun¬ 
try! Wouldn’t it be worth while to make 
the slums of one town decent, even if the 
other towns have to wait until Julia has 
changed the economic order?” 



A LINE A DAY 


159 


“The other towns might catch it,” Walter 
suggested. “We could do Simmons Street 
some day. I would earn it for you.” 

She smiled at him. “And would you earn 
me a lovely green park? Uplands needs a 
park.” 

“Yes; and I’d make a statue of you to go 
in the middle of it.” He drew nearer on the 
bench and found her hand. “It is such a long 
day when you are out of town,” he said. “Oh, 
how was the funeral?” 

The dogs sprang up to bark. Mrs. Lee was 
at the door. 

“Well, dear, what does Walter think of 
your news?” she asked. 

“Oh, I had forgotten to tell him. I mean, I 
was just going to,” said Mary Lee. “Walter, 
it looks as though I were the heiress.” 

“It doesn’t look so, it is so,” Mrs. Lee cor¬ 
rected her. “Mary Lee’s grandfather has left 
her a very large fortune.” 

Walter’s response was pure delight, ex¬ 
pressed in an Indian yell that set the family 
in a commotion. Mrs. Lee’s tone had subtly 
put him at a distance, but all he saw was that 


160 


A LINE A DAY 


at last something nearly good enough had 
happened to Mary Lee. He was glorified and 
funny about it and, as she had said, ready to 
go on loving her at the top of his lungs. Mrs. 
Lee became peremptory and took her child 
home. 

“Walter has so little restraint,” she ob¬ 
jected as they crossed the street. 

“Yes; he’s not a bit like George,” Mary Lee 
assented. 


CHAPTER IX 


“I suppose we shall hear about the will 
to-day,” Mrs. Lee said on rising, and, “No 
doubt we shall hear to-morrow,” she 
amended on going to bed. She told no one 
but Carrie, for a woman of the world does 
not go about shouting over an inheritance, 
and when the news got out she met the re¬ 
porters with an effect of cool reluctance. She 
would not permit them to turn their cameras 
on Mary Lee, but she did allow her por¬ 
trait of her daughter to be photographed. 
“Heiress to Five Millions?” they labeled it. 
Mary Lee, finding it staring up at her from 
the breakfast table, showed signs of panic. 

“Five million dollars couldn’t possibly hap¬ 
pen to me. I’m not that kind,” she declared. 

“I doubt if millionaires are all of one 
kind.” Mrs. Lee found her daughter trying 
but showed a new patience with her as an 
heiress. “Don’t you think you could carry 

161 


162 


A LINE A DAY 


off money as well as the daughter of a pork- 
packer or the wife of a war millionaire?” 

“Oh, dear, no.” 

“And why not?” 

“It’s simpler for them. They are direct. 
They go straight across the board and come 
back queens. I’m always taking the knight’s 
move and landing round the corner.” 

Mrs. Lee had a shrug for subtleties. “No 
matter what kind you are, your grandfather 
can perfectly well leave you a fortune,” she 
settled it and went off for a triumphant walk 
up the avenue, in the course of which she 
tried on an evening wrap of wistaria velvet 
and sables and inspected a small but exquis¬ 
ite marble house that was for sale. 

“It is very nice—as far as it goes; but there 
is so little room for entertaining,” she com¬ 
plained to the agent, and went on to look at 
another house that had a ballroom. She was 
having a wonderful time. The ballroom 
house was such a bargain that she could not 
resist telling Mary Lee about it. 

“I was only amusing myself, of course,” 
she added, puzzled by the girl’s stare of dis- 


A LINE A DAY 


163 


tress. “One can look without being com¬ 
mitted.” 

“Oh, mother—would we have to break into 
society?” It was a wail. 

Mrs. Lee kept her good humor by main 
force. “My dear girl, with that house and 
that income, there won’t be any vulgar ques¬ 
tion of breaking in.” 

“You mean they would all just come and 
ring the bell?” 

“What a child you are!” She tried to smile 
about it. “You have never had the slightest 
conception of the power of money. What is 
your idea of being rich?” she added. 

Mary Lee spoke passionately: “Not hunt¬ 
ing anything—not sitters nor suitors nor 
swells! No planning and pulling things off! 
Oh, mother, no pretending! Being frankly 
what we are!” 

Her mother was offended past conceal¬ 
ment. “As a woman of wealth and position, 
I should feel myself being frankly what I 
am,” she observed. “Curious—your ten¬ 
dency to slip down in the world. You cer¬ 
tainly did not get it from me.” 


164 


A LINE A DAY 


“Ah, if I get the money, she is going to hate 
me,” was Mary Lee’s secret cry. She would 
give her mother anything, but she would not 
go with her or play her game. That was 
absolutely certain. 

George had stayed in the country to aid in 
the search. At the end of a week he came 
down, worn and gloomy. 

“I hate to discourage you, but I’m afraid 
we have hunted everywhere,” he said, hold¬ 
ing Mary Lee’s hand in both his. 

“You speak as if it were my kidnapped 
child,” she said cheerfully. “I have known 
all along that you wouldn’t find it.” 

George occasionally surprised her by tak¬ 
ing her literally. “How could you know it?” 
he asked. 

“Oh, by the feeling in my bones. By look¬ 
ing in the mirror. By the direction of the 
wind. Probabilities! No one who can cook 
and scrub and sew and carpenter and uphol¬ 
ster as well as I can will ever be made rich. 
It would be too wasteful.” 

George rubbed a heavy hand across his 
forehead. “I can’t help feeling to blame,” he 


A LINE A DAY 


165 


exclaimed. “I made him angry. If he burned 
the will, he did it in his first temper. And 
perhaps it was because I had made him an¬ 
gry that he died that night.” His look was 
haggard. “I’d give ten years of my life to find 
it for you!” 

Mary Lee sighed. “Oh, dear! Everybody 
seems to care about it so much more than I 
do.” 

“That’s your courage, little girl, and your 
pride,” George told her somberly. “But if I 
could bring you the news that the will was 
found, you’d discover that you cared.” 

“I’d like the fun of having it happen,” she 
admitted. “And I want a more important 
life—mine is too silly. But, oh, George, when 
you come face to face with a little old, old 
woman, her head in a shawl and her feet 
tied up in sacking and a bundle of wood on 
her back—how can you stand having five 
million dollars?” She was giving up her most 
profound secret, but George had no ear for 
the depths behind the question. 

“The world is like that. You’d get used to 
it,” he said comfortingly. “Don’t be taken in 



166 


A LINE A DAY 


by the Socialists, Mary Lee; that is all bunk. 
You would contribute to the public charities, 
of course. You’d do a lot of good. It isn’t 
nearly as much as five millions,” he added. 
“Nearer three millions than four, Mr. Hanks 
says.” 

“They sound about the same to me,” said 
Mary Lee; and then, as her mother came in, 
she threw out a consoling, “It’s only about 
three millions, anyway, mother!” 

Mrs. Lee’s first tense glance at George had 
read his news, but she refused to be cast 
down. She had been surreptitiously trying a 
limousine, and its luxurious roll, its com¬ 
munity with the other passing cars, the 
glances cast from that intimate level to see 
“who” she was, had hardened her determina¬ 
tion. She would not give up all that when 
it was just within her grasp! 

“He would not have burned the will until 
he had made another,” she assured George. 
“He didn’t want the college to have the 
money, he told the girls so himself. He was 
queer, and he did something queer with the 
will, but you will find it.” 


A LINE A DAY 


167 


She so cheered and stimulated George that 
he took a train back to Uplands that night; 
and again the suspense hung heavy over 
their lives. A cache of important papers dis¬ 
covered in the seat of an arm chair seemed 
to make anything possible. 

To Walter the situation was pure drama 
and he enjoyed it mightily. He even tried to 
make Mrs. Lee share his point of view. 

“You see, you’ve had it happen,” he ex¬ 
plained to her. “I mean, you’ve had the law¬ 
yer and the secret will and the ‘about five 
million dollars’—one of the really big sensa¬ 
tions. Life doesn’t often hand out a thriller 
like that. Whether you get the money or not, 
you’ve had the fun.” 

Mrs. Lee found him exasperating. “That 
is utter nonsense,” she said sharply. “I am 
not interested in thrills and sensations.” 

“All we ask is the money,” put in Mary 
Lee. 

That troubled him. “You want it awfully?” 

“Of course she wants it,” Mrs. Lee an¬ 
swered for her. Mary Lee, lying back in a 
deep chair, only sighed. 



168 


A LINE A DAY 


Mrs. Lee soon left the room, being too rest¬ 
less to stay long in one spot and having 
thoughts too interesting to be interrupted by 
the chatter of young people. She presently 
came down in cloak and hat, her eyes pre¬ 
occupied. 

“I am going to have a talk with Carrie,” 
she said, and went out forgetting how she 
disliked to be alone in the streets at night. 

Walter brought a stool over by Mary Lee’s 
chair. 

“Don’t you get what I mean—the joy of the 
adventure?” he urged. 

“I’d like to;” she spoke wistfully. “That is 
the way to live, of course—to get the flavor 
of everything that happens to you. You 
squeeze life, Walter; there won’t be anything 
left in the rind when you are through with 
it. But I’m finding the suspense rather aw¬ 
ful. You see, I can’t go ahead with my nat¬ 
ural life. If I have a fortune, there is no 
sense in darning old stockings, and if I 
haven’t, I ought to be out this minute looking 
for work.” 

“But there is where the sport comes in,” he 


A LINE A DAY 


169 


told her triumphantly. “It’s the highest sort 
of gambling. Everything hangs on the turn 
of a card and you have to sit tight and wait 
for it to turn. You’re going to break the bank 
or go home on top of a freight car.” 

“I am getting some insight into your past,” 
she warned him. 

Walter laughed at old memories. “Oh, yes. 
I came back on the fast freight. Touch my 
head with a rope-end now and I’ll go flat on 
my face. But even that was better than life 
at Uncle Burton’s.” 

She loved his tales of the bewildered 
clergyman who, having received an or¬ 
phaned nephew into his well ordered home, 
had done his faithful best to smooth away all 
the irregularities of the divine hand that had 
shaped him and to reduce him to a machine 
product stamped out by the million in the 
mills of civilization. 

“He did his duty, poor old duck,” Walter 
granted him, “but it was the happiest day of 
his life when I ran away.” 

“And yet you may owe him a good deal,” 
Mary Lee suggested. “You are a decent sort, 



170 


A LINE A DAY 


on the whole, and perhaps it was Uncle Bur¬ 
ton’s teachings—” 

Walter straightened up. “If I thought that 
I’d go out and commit murder, theft, arson 
and bigamy this very night! No. If I am 
half way decent, it is because I remember my 
father, and how my mother felt about him. 
Some day I want you to feel like that about 
me, darling Mary Lee. That’s all right—we 
won’t go into it now,” he added quickly un¬ 
der her frown. “You have too much on your 
mind—you don’t want to bother about love. 
All you want is the best kind of a friend. I’ve 
got that all doped out.” And he looked so 
pleased with his wisdom that she had to 
laugh. 

“You are a heavenly child,” she said. “Tell 
me a story, a long story out of your past. I 
want to stop thinking.” 

It was an order that Walter adored. He 
considered various episodes, laughing to 
himself as he rejected them, and began on an 
exploit of the war. Though her eyes were 
fixed on his face, Mary Lee did not listen 
very closely; she was thinking touched, 


A LINE A DAY 


171 


grateful, almost passionate thoughts about 
the beauty of having a friend like Walter. 
Such a friendship gave life richness, impor¬ 
tance, background. George was for stated 
hours, late afternoon and evening, but one 
could be with Walter all day long and have 
no sense of fatigue, no desire to get away. 
That was because, in spite of his love non¬ 
sense, he was really and truly a friend, a 
friend for life. They would never be talked 
out, never develop away from each other. 
No doubt in time Walter would marry some 
nice girl, and Mary Lee would be lovely to 
Alice—that seemed to be her name—and to 
their children; and when Alice finally died 
Walter would come over every night and 
they would still make each other laugh, in 
spite of all the tears of things— 

“What’s that!” exclaimed Walter. 

Mary Lee furtively dried her eyes and sat 
up to listen. It came again, a shattering 
sound of falling glass. They opened the 
front door just as flames jetted from an up¬ 
per window of Walter’s house. 

“I’ll telephone,” said Mary Lee calmly. 




172 


A LINE A DAY 


“And get the family out,” Walter shouted 
as he ran. 

She called up the fire department, then 
flew after him. It was easy to take the dogs 
and cages across the street and she caught the 
Purrmaid in a sweater, but the tiger kittens 
took it for a game and scampered just out 
of reach. Overhead she could hear Walter 
trampling and smashing things against a 
steadily growing rush of sound. The studio 
looked strangely cool and quiet with its clay 
and plaster figures rearing up against the 
walls and destruction coming steadily nearer. 
In another ten minutes the work of years 
might be gone. Mary Lee tried to push the 
stand that held the new group, but when 
neighbors burst in she pointed to the kittens. 

“We must get them out,” she cried. 

“Better get Lucas out,” some one said, and 
started up the stairs, but came choking back. 

Commotion in the street, and the long ser¬ 
pent of the hose was running in on rubber- 
booted legs, its brass snout nosing for the 
trouble. Mary Lee, with one squirming kit¬ 
ten under her arm, went on pursuing the 


A LINE A DAY 


173 


other. She believed that she was being en¬ 
tirely cool and collected. Walter had told 
her to save the family, and in time of disaster 
you must do exactly as you are told. The 
fire chief, finding her blankly deaf to com¬ 
mands, took her arm to drag her out. 

“But I’ve got to catch the kittens,” she told 
him. 

A swoop of his long arm and Sweetness 
was joined to Light against her breast, both 
scratching wildly. 

“Now hustle,” she was commanded. 

She shut the kittens in her room and sat at 
the window to watch. Walter did not come 
out. Of course, he was all right; one was 
never afraid for Walter. Her own bodily 
weakness was the reaction from chasing 
those wretched kittens, now happily chewing 
each other on her bed, and the sick drag at 
her heart was for the lovely works in mortal 
danger. Meanwhile jangled nerves kept 
sending up an automatic gasp, “Walter— 
W alter—W alter—” 

The crowd was pushed back and the work 
went on with orderly speed. So small a house 


174 


A LINE A DAY 


could be drowned in water, within and with¬ 
out, and the fire was visibly giving up the 
fight. Presently firemen were looking from 
the upper windows, standing conquerors on 
the broken roof. Walter, no doubt, was 
keeping guard over his works. 

“But he might come out and wave to me,” 
Mary Lee said with chattering teeth. 

Some one must have been hurt, for the sud¬ 
den alarm of an ambulance parted the crowd. 
The surgeon, gleaming white, hurried into 
the house with his bag. One of the fire en¬ 
gines went home, the other kept up a dire 
throbbing—unless that came from Mary 
Lee’s own pulses. 

“Firemen are always being overcome by 
smoke or cut by glass,” Mary Lee insisted. 
“It probably isn’t anything important.” 

The surgeon came out, fumbled in the back 
of the ambulance, went in again. Mary Lee 
suddenly found her strength and went down 
to the street. 

“Who is hurt?” she asked of the policeman 
holding back the crowd. 

He could not tell her and he would not let 


A LINE A DAY 


175 


her through to find out. She stood there 
waiting until the door opened and a swaying 
figure in flannel shirt and boots was helped 
out, the surgeon holding him on one side and 
Walter, incredibly blackened but alive, 
whole, and even enjoying himself, on the 
other. 

Mary Lee reached her doorstep and there 
sank down, her face on her knees. When 
the dizziness had passed, she crept into the 
house. Leerie, coming wagging to meet her, 
found himself caught in a close embrace. 

“He’s all right, Leerie, he’s all right,” Mary 
Lee wept. Then she became very practical 
and efficient and made coffee, strong, the 
way Walter loved it. 

“It is such joy to do things for your best 
friend,” she told the dogs with shaken ear¬ 
nestness. 

“Well, I must say!” Mrs. Lee was in the 
doorway, tall with righteous protest. “I sup¬ 
pose Walter threw a lighted cigarette in the 
wastebasket—it would be just like him.” 

It was only too possible. “But he never 
will again,” Mary Lee pointed out with dis- 


176 


A LINE A DAY 


arming mildness. “He has learned that. 
Have some coffee?” 

Mrs. Lee had had a shock and was not to 
be appeased with coffee. The last of the ap¬ 
paratus had been leaving as she turned her 
corner. 

“I thought it was our house and that every¬ 
thing we had in the world might be gone. See 
how my hand shakes!” She held it out, and 
Wagner seized the chance to give it a large 
wet kiss. She suppressed a cry. “Good 
heavens—have we got to have all these crea¬ 
tures underfoot?” she exclaimed. 

“We may even have to have Walter under¬ 
foot to-night,” Mary Lee said, going to let him 
in. 

Walter had washed away the grime, but 
his clothes were blackened and he brought 
an acrid smell of smoke. He was in wild 
spirits and he loved everybody, even Mrs. 
Lee. 

“Not a bit of damage done,” he told her, as 
though she might have been worrying. 

“But your bedroom—your clothes—” she 
protested. 


A LINE A DAY 


177 


“Oh, yes; they’re all gone,” he assented 
cheerfully. “But the works weren’t even 
scratched and Mary Lee got out the family.” 
He had a dog’s head in each hand. “You were 
a trump! Have they thanked you like little 
gentlemen?” 

“The kittens didn’t thank me.” She told 
of her chase, as full of laughter as he. Mrs. 
Lee bore it with difficulty. 

“You won’t sleep,” she broke in as Mary 
Lee refilled her coffee cup. 

“Nobody could sleep after that,” Walter 
laughed, and they began to go through it all 
over again with childish enjoyment. 

“Well, you have had the fun of having it 
happen,” Mrs. Lee quoted impatiently. “How 
did it start?” 

The fire chief had laid it to a defective in¬ 
sulation, but she insisted on the cigarette. 

“Of course, you can stay here to-night, but 
I will ask you not to smoke,” she said with 
forbearing courtesy. 

Walter had no need of shelter. “Oh, I’m 
going back,” he explained. “They have left 
a fireman on guard—awfully nice fellow. 


178 


A LINE A DAY 


We shall probably chin most of the night. 
And the dogs can come too. If you wouldn’t 
mind keeping the cats and birds? Just till 
we dry out over there?” 

“I’d love to have them,” Mary Lee said. 
“How about taking some coffee to your fire¬ 
man?” 

Walter was enchanted. She made them a 
package of sandwiches, reckless of to-mor¬ 
row’s meals, and insisted on his taking a 
handsome steamer rug that had been 
brought to Mrs. Lee from Scotland. She 
seemed to think that nothing was too good 
for a man who had nearly burned up the 
whole neighborhood. 

“The will isn’t found yet, you know,” Mrs. 
Lee reminded her daughter, who was giving 
the remaining cream to the Purrmaid. 

“The will!” Mary Lee’s radiance was 
dimmed. “I had forgotten all about it. Oh, 
why did you remind me? I might have had 
one night off.” But she did not stay long un¬ 
der its shadow. The sleepless night passed 
in reliving the horror and then the joy, over 
and over. She got up before seven singing. 


A LINE A DAY 


179 


and so rightly earned the blow that fell be¬ 
fore eleven. 

“We have examined every scrap of paper,” 
George told them. “We’ve looked in every 
possible hiding place. I can’t see anything 
for it but to give up the search and let the 
old will be probated.” 

“Unless we should contest it?” Mrs. Lee 
suggested. 

George discussed that but could not con¬ 
scientiously advise it. He had had a talk with 
the head of the college, a tight-fisted man 
who put the needs of education far above the 
needs of descendants who had been pointed¬ 
ly excluded in the will. He would fight, not 
compromise, and a legal fight held little 
hope for the family. 

“I think I could make them give you the 
old home,” he said. “They ought to give you 
a life income, too, but a college is always a 
hog about inheritances. They could give you 
the house and never feel it But would you 
want to live in Uplands?” 

“As well there as anywhere,” Mrs. Lee 
said, her lips in a hard line. 


180 A LINE A DAY 

“But I could get work here,” Mary Lee be¬ 
gan. 

Mrs. Lee would not discuss that before 
George. “See what you can do about the old 
house,” she said, taking up again her role of 
untroubled lady. “I have given up this place, 
anyway, and we must move before the first. 
A summer in Uplands might be pleasant.” 
She kept the conversation up on that plane 
until George, vaguely reassured about them, 
rose to take his leave. 

“I shall be up there a good deal myself this 
summer,” he told Mary Lee over his large 
handclasp. “There’s a fair country club—I 
think we can make it pleasant for you.” His 
loving threat was in his smile. “You ought 
to have a car. I could teach you to run it.” 

Mrs. Lee thought that an excellent idea. 
Even after George had gone she kept her de¬ 
termined poise. 

“The country would be a change for us. I 
quite like the idea,” she said graciously. 

“But, mother, how could we get along up 
there?” Mary Lee protested. “Won’t you see 
that I must go to work?” 


A LINE A DAY 


181 


Mrs. Lee was mild, absent. “A dignified 
old house would look a good deal better than 
anything you could earn,” she said. 

“But I am so tired of playing lady!” Mary 
Lee was violent. “I want a job! I want a 
definite sum of money every week in an 
envelope!” 

“There are other ways,” was the soothing 
answer. 

“Not if you are thinking of George!” 

Mrs. Lee was not thinking of George. She 
stared at her daughter remotely until her 
real thought came out: “Men don’t know how 
to look. I’ll find that will!” 

Walter came in at noon, refreshed by a 
Turkish bath and wearing a suit that had 
fortunately been at the tailor’s. He was still 
in last night’s mood, but Mary Lee could not 
go back to it. Both the fear and the exulta¬ 
tion were forgotten. She had to admit that 
the old home would be better than a dingy 
city lodging dependent on her uncertain 
earnings, but she was unhappy, baffled. 

“I can’t seem to get my hands on any¬ 
thing,” she burst out. “I’m always held up. 


182 


A LINE A DAY 


No one would expect a man to endure my 
life—he’d break loose and amount to some¬ 
thing. I must go pottering on, making things 
look well—looks for ladies! I am so tired it, 
Walter!” 

“Away up there—to live!” Walter’s gaiety 
was wrecked. He could find adventure in 
the loss of millions, enjoyment in the burn¬ 
ing of his house, but this was bleak tragedy. 
“I never thought of anything so awful as 
that,” he said slowly. 

“Oh, yes. It’s the end of everything here,” 
she assented. 

Walter had come in with a sheet of paper 
in his hand; he looked blindly down at it, 
then crumpled it and put it in his pocket. 
“And that’s that,” he said. “I was making a 
plan for rebuilding the place—I wanted to 
show it to you.” 

“It will have to be rebuilt,” she said with¬ 
out interest. 

“Not for me. I couldn’t live here with you 
gone. My lease is nearly up—I was going to 
renew it for life if you liked my plan. But 
now—!” He rose. “Could you keep the kits 
one day more, while I find a new place?” 



A LINE A DAY 


183 


“As long as you like.” She was stroking 
the white Purrmaid. “You can’t find a place 
in a day, Walter!” 

“Oh, one is as good as another,” he said 
drearily, and went out on dragging feet. 


CHAPTER X 


George secured for them permission to use 
the Uplands house for the present; the ques¬ 
tion of its ownership would have to await the 
action of the trustees. Mrs. Lee hurried their 
going. The old treasures were sent off to an 
auction room to sell for what they would 
bring, the packing was rushed through. They 
might have had two weeks more of home, 
but she would not stay. She was in a fever 
of impatience. The triumphant, “Til find 
that will!” ran like a refrain under every¬ 
thing she said. 

Walter’s search lasted for several days, 
during which they scarcely saw him. When 
he finally came to collect the family, Mary 
Lee was out. 

“Had he found a studio?” she asked. 

Mrs. Lee reported that Walter had found a 
splendid place and was in the best of spirits. 

184 


A LINE A DAY 


185 


She had not thought to ask the address. “He 
will be over to tell you about it,” she disposed 
of that. She wanted to talk about express- 
men and stopping the morning paper. It was 
a relief to have those cats out of the way. 

“Did you remind him that we are going 
Thursday?” Mary Lee insisted. Mrs. Lee be¬ 
lieved she had. 

Walter did not come that evening, but 
there was light in his place and a sound of 
hammering and sawing. No doubt he was 
protecting the works for their move. Mary 
Lee went to sleep rather hurt. It seemed in¬ 
decently soon for him to be in the best of 
spirits. 

“Oh, well, he enjoys everything. He will 
adore fixing up a new studio,” she admitted, 
and felt herself old and left aside and for¬ 
gotten. 

When the morning did not bring him, she 
went boldly across the street and knocked. 
Usually a sound at his door roused barks, a 
scuttle of paws, squawks from the cages, be¬ 
fore it was opened, but to-day nothing 
answered. The stillness was so complete that 


186 


A LINE A DAY 


she drew back to look. The windows above 
were boarded up and the roof showed a 
patch; stains of water and smoke gave an 
effect of forlorn abandonment. She knocked 
again, then peered in under a windowshade 
that was not wholly down. The interior was 
starkly empty. Statues, modeling stands, 
cages, all were gone. Only the broken-backed 
sofa stood stranded in the center of the floor. 
Walter had moved. 

“He will come back and tell me about it,” 
Mary Lee assured her shocked self. “He 
doesn’t owe me an account of his move¬ 
ments,” she added impatiently. “It is only 
that everything hurts, just now.” 

Thursday dawned rich with April scents, 
ironically sweet and stirring. Mrs. Lee had 
devoted both of their lives to the difficult 
acquisition of worldly goods, and yet now 
three trunks and a crate of paintings were 
their all. She had slowly and painfully col¬ 
lected a bright circle of acquaintances, and 
yet there was only Carrie to see them off. 
Julia was at school, and Walter had not 
come or telephoned. It seemed to Mary Lee 


A LINE A DAY 


187 


the saddest trip of their lives, the walk down 
their brief end of street to the bus that would 
take them to the station. 

“ ‘All, all are gone, the old familiar 
faces,’ ” beat through her head as she looked 
back; but her mother sat on the edge of the 
seat, looking tensely forward. When they 
entered the old house, Mrs. Lee was oblivious 
of its moth and rust; her eyes had begun 
to search before the door closed behind 
them. 

It was Mary Lee who employed stout vil¬ 
lage assistance and put through a week of 
purification. Mrs. Lee hovered over every 
dim carpet that was taken up, every crumb¬ 
ling curtain that came down; but she moved 
in a dream and would have forgotten even to 
eat but for her daughter and the kind Mur¬ 
rays next door. Sometimes she said vague¬ 
ly that so much work “was hardly worth 
while,” but Mary Lee, painting floors or 
mending shutters, offered no argument. As 
soon as a room had been made clean and 
bare as a shell, it was closed, but provision¬ 
ally, and she often went back to linger in its 


188 


A LINE A DAY 


doorway. There were possibilities in those 
big, high-ceilinged rooms looking out on the 
tangle of the old garden. 

“Boarders wouldn’t be much worse than 
sitters,” she told herself. “Paying guests,” 
she amended with a glimmer of wickedness. 
The inevitable explanations sounded in her 
ears: “We were so lonely, just two women 
rattling about in that great house! It is really 
much more like a home, now that we have 
taken in a few congenial persons.” . . . “Poor 
mother,” she said, and sighed. 

Neighbors called, but Mrs. Lee’s courtesy 
scarcely veiled her inattention. She kept the 
attitude of gracious hostess, but her hands 
were slipping into the crannies of chair or 
sofa, her eyes straying to possible hiding 
places; and she did not return their visits. 
Girls came to see Mary Lee, took her out in 
their cars and invited her to their club, but 
the suspense that overhung the house was in¬ 
fectious and she could put no heart into 
building up a new life. She knew beyond 
question that the will would not be found, 
but a sense that something was about to hap- 


A LINE A DAY 


189 


pen haunted her days, making her heart leap 
at a sudden sound or a hurried step. And 
she was lonely and hurt. Walter did not owe 
her an account of his movements, and yet his 
going off without a word was a wound that 
she could not let alone. Possibilities of acci¬ 
dent and illness rose grewsomely before her 
in the night; sometimes possibilities of high 
adventure laid a cold depression on her 
spirit—for people had been known to call 
Walter a limb of Satan before there was 
Mary Lee. Her line of good-by sent to his old 
address with a pointed “Please forward,” 
had not been answered. 

When the work was done and the helpers 
had gone, Mary Lee spent a day in her vast 
old black walnut bed, too tired even to think. 
Her mother’s footsteps came and went about 
the house all day, sometimes hurrying past 
as though sped by a bright idea, sometimes 
hesitating as though they awaited inspira¬ 
tion. In the late afternoon Mary Lee dragged 
herself down-stairs for a glass of milk, but 
there was no evidence that her mother had 
lunched. Through the open doors of the 


190 


A LINE A DAY 


library she saw Mrs. Lee on her knees before 
an ancient encyclopedia, taking down the 
volumes one by one. The absorbed interest 
of her lighted face, the quickened hands, 
checked Mary Lee’s impulse to protest. 

“She’s happy, happier than she has been 
for years,” she thought it out, slipping past 
unnoticed. “I won’t spoil it. I will just 
quietly get ready.” 

Getting ready meant going over the fine 
old furniture of her grandmother’s day, 
mending and polishing and upholstering. 
George Murray, coming through the garden 
Saturday afternoon, found her on the floor 
of the side porch surrounded by paints, tools, 
and chairs, hammering a dislocated rocker 
into place. 

“Wasn’t there enough furniture you would 
use?” he asked, adding an indignant, “With 
all you have to do—!” 

Mary Lee gave her rocker a final whack, 
then dropped the hammer and looked on her 
operations with weary pride. “Oh, I like to 
have a little hand work for when I sit down,” 
she assured him. 


A LINE A DAY 


191 


That only exasperated him. “Surely two 
ladies don’t need five, seven, ten straight 
chairs,” he protested. Mary Lee, dropping 
her voice because of the open windows, told 
him her plan. He would have fulminated, 
but she cut him short. 

“Oh, yes; we are too good to keep board¬ 
ers, it’s a crying shame—all that. But what I 
want to know is, could we make it pay? For 
we’ve got to live. You may not see the neces¬ 
sity, and there are moments when I don’t, but 
certainly my mother has to live; and when 
we have eaten up the old Chinese chest and 
the Spanish warming pan and the other 
things, there won’t be any money left. Ques¬ 
tion one is, Could we, trained in the house¬ 
hold arts, make it a financial go? The wit¬ 
ness will please keep to the point.” 

The witness only stared at her with a som¬ 
ber fixity. Mary Lee saw what was coming 
and tried to stave it off. 

“Well, I know we could. Witness is ex¬ 
cused. The real question is, How much 
chance have we of being left here undis¬ 
turbed? It would be too bitter to build up a 


192 


A LINE A DAY 


perfectly good boarding-house and then have 
them take it away from us. What are those 
trustees going to do?” 

There at least, was something George could 
take hold of. “They’re going to give it to you. 
I’ll go to them myself and make them.” 

“Oh, George, you will?” 

“I certainly will.” 

“And the furniture, too? We’d have to 
have that.” 

“House and contents. If I don’t squeeze 
that out of them, I don’t know my business,” 
George declared. “The house ought to stay 
in the family, anyway, whether you take 
boarders or not.” A nod tried to announce 
his destination, and again Mary Lee hurried 
on. 

“Don’t say a word about boarders to my 
mother. She’ll come to it when she has to, 
poor dear, but she still—•” She checked her¬ 
self, nodding toward the bay window. They 
could see Mrs. Lee standing within, running 
her fingers lightly about the sills and case¬ 
ments. 

“How well and young she looks,” he ex- 


A LINE A DAY 


193 


claimed. “But you are carrying all the bur¬ 
den, little girl.” And again his longing gaze 
closed down on her. 

It had to come, so she went to meet it. 
“George, don’t let us make each other un¬ 
happy,” she urged. “I don’t love any one—I 
can’t. I won’t. I’m done with it. Truly, it is 
no use.” 

“But I want to take care of you,” he 
pleaded, and so nearly broke her heart—be¬ 
cause it was so good and kind of him, and 
yet she could not let him. After he had gone 
she sat for a long time among her chairs, 
feeling ashamed and guilty and unfathom- 
ably sad. 

“And there are girls who call them ‘pro¬ 
posals’—vulgar beast of a word—and are 
proud of them and count them,” she mar¬ 
velled. “Oh, it’s horrible to refuse love!” 

She could hear Mrs. Murray speaking to 
George from a window—“Georgie,” she 
called him, and the love and pride in her 
voice made it moving. He was a good son. 
He might lay down the law for his woman¬ 
kind, but they adored him for that, and he 


194 


A LINE A DAY 


never let his city success crowd them out of 
his life. And if he was soundly shut against 
new ideas, he was at least faithful to those 
he had. With Walter one could explore the 
universe on free wings, question anything 
without check or rebuke, and so he was bet¬ 
ter company; but in the worst place of her 
life he had deserted. Possibly he had come 
upon his Alice. 

“I don’t love any oneshe told herself that 
with angry certainty. “Probably I never shall. 
And George would be down town all day— 
except Sunday.” The thought of Sunday was 
rather discouraging. George was fond of de¬ 
claring that he was old-fashioned about some 
things, and Sunday was one of them. He 
would want a pew at St. Thomas’s and his 
wife in it; Sunday papers, a heavy family 
dinner, a nap, a walk, a general brightening 
as night brought Monday morning and the 
office nearer— 

“Oh, my God!” Mary Lee said aloud. 

“My dear!” Her mother’s voice from the 
open door behind her was so critical of her 
taste that she had to make some explanation. 


A LINE A DAY 


195 


“I was just thinking how dull a thoroughly 
respectable, prosperous Sunday could be,” 
she said with a laugh. 

“If you are prosperous you give delightful 
little Sunday dinners, or you motor out of 
town to pleasant houses,” Mrs. Lee instructed 
her. “Nothing need ever be dull, with 
money.” 

Mary Lee privately thought that it w T ould 
depend on who controlled the money. But 
life was rather dull anyway, and it would 
feel good to be relieved of the increasing 
pressure of anxiety. That, “I want to take 
care of you,” echoed warmly in her thoughts. 
When her mother had gone, she shut her 
eyes and tried to let herself sink into 
George’s care, into his big arms— 

“No!” she said sharply and went back to 
hammering. 

George came again that evening. The 
fact of having met a refusal never seemed to 
keep a modern man away. Mrs. Lee cher¬ 
ished a tale of finding herself at dinner put 
next to a man she had refused the week be¬ 
fore and the ghastly awkwardness of it for 


196 


A LINE A DAY 


them both, but any one of Mary Lee’s lovers 
would have taken it simply as good luck. 
Even when Mrs. Lee left them alone together 
while she went in to the eternally unfinished 
letter, there was no sense of difficulty. 
George was his cheerful self as they sat on 
the steps to watch the moon rise. He ex¬ 
pounded what he would do for the place if 
it were his: good lawns, shrubbery, a per¬ 
gola, a bird-bath; a delicate allegory of what 
he could do for Mary Lee. He was not trying 
to bribe her; he was simply revelling in the 
picture of giving her things and so making 
her happy. When she spoke of clearing the 
overgrown paths herself, he was distressed. 

“I can’t bear to have you work,” he ex¬ 
claimed. “If you would only let me send a 
good man—” But Walter would have wanted 
to do it with her, for her. He would have 
made the work an intimate adventure. 

“Stop it!” she commanded herself. There 
was no Walter. 

“I am going to bring over the family car 
to-morrow and give you a lesson,” George was 
saying when she came back to attention. 


A LINE A DAY 


197 


“And you’d better take up golf. The girls will 

i 

go round with you.” 

The suggestion amused her. “My good 
George, by the time I’ve gone round the 
house with a broom and round the dishes 
with a mop, I can’t go round anything else,” 
she explained. 

George laid down the law about the value 
of sport and the danger of taking too much 
care of the house, common to all women. 
“You will enjoy the country club dances. I’ll 
come up and take you to them. I want you 
to like it here,” he said, a moving tenderness 
in his voice. 

“Oh, I like it well enough,” she said, inten¬ 
tionally casual, and let him go away down¬ 
cast, then was sorry and wished she might 
comfort him. “It is what I ought to do—but 
it would be like marrying Uncle Burton,” she 
told herself as she went in. 

They had Sunday dinner at the Murrays’, 
hot and hearty at half past one, George carv¬ 
ing the roast, visibly happy at carving for 
Mary Lee. Mrs. Lee was always very “nice” 
to the Murrays,—a visiting sovereign could 


198 


A LINE A DAY 


not have shown a more democratic intention, 
and the Murrays were sorry for her, patient 
of what they called her airs, glad to welcome 
her for Mary Lee’s sake, so the atmosphere 
was pleasant. The Murray women were pay¬ 
ing Mary Lee the highest compliment in their 
power in wanting her to “take” their George, 
as they visibly did. They showed George off 
to her, led him on to tell his best tales, 
pointed him out to her with their loving eyes. 
After dinner Mrs. Murray took her up-stairs to 
show her the collected photographs of 
George’s youth; she even had him as a naked 
baby kicking on a pillow. When Mary Lee 
laughed over it, seeing something of the pres¬ 
ent George in the line of the head and the 
cheerful power of the kicks, Mrs. Murray 
slipped it out of its frame. 

“I want you to have that, dear,” she whis¬ 
pered. 

Mary Lee found her unbearably touching. 

“No; I haven’t any right to it,” she said and 
gave it back. 

Mrs. Murray’s face fell but she would not 
admit disappointment. 


A LINE A DAY 


199 


“Perhaps some day—” she said. “Unless 
you like that one better?” That was George 
in his first knickerbockers, serenely pleased 
with himself, his ears at right angles. Mary 
Lee had to get away from this gentle pres¬ 
sure. 

“You are all so good to me,” she said re¬ 
morsefully. “I’m not worth it, Mrs. Murray. 
But it was a wonderful dinner!” 

She went softly down the stairs, hoping to 
escape George. Her mother had already gone 
home and the girls were in their rooms. In 
the living room George sat in a welter of Sun¬ 
day newspapers, his head fallen sidewise in 
slumber; a bee drowsed about him in the 
Sunday stillness; his big limbs drooped as 
though prosperity and content were heavy 
things. Again that unrighteous cry rose to 
Mary Lee’s lips— 

“Oh, my God!” 

She ran home as though she were pursued. 

Mrs. Lee had the drawers of the desk out 
and was examining the woodwork behind 
them. 

“I like simple, middle class Americans like 



200 


A LINE A DAY 


the Murrays,” she said graciously. “There is 
something quite fine about them. And if you 
lived in New York you wouldn’t have to see 
any more of them than you wanted to.” 

Mary Lee gave a quiet, deliberate scream. 
“That’s the way you all make me feel,” she 
explained. “It’s like being in an iron cage and 
seeing the walls coming closer and closer.” 

“That is a very silly way to describe a good 
marriage,” Mrs. Lee rebuked her. 

“If I married George, I should be well fed 
and cared for,” Mary Lee admitted, “but, oh, 
mother, what could I put in my diary?” 

Mrs. Lee saw no reason for keeping a diary 
—now. “I’m sure you made enough fuss 
about it when you had to,” she observed. 

Mary Lee could not stay in the house. 
George would presently wake up and re¬ 
member his suggestion about the family car. 
No one would want the car if George wanted 
it, no one would stay in the room if George 
called. They were driving her frantic. “I 
might accept him from sheer nervousness,” 
she admitted as she pinned on her hat and 
tried to slip out unheard. 


A LINE A DAY 


201 


“Where are you going?” her mother called. 

“For a long walk. Hours and hours,” she 
called back and fled. It was the first walk 
she had taken, except to run into the village 
for errands, and the pleasantness soothed as 
well as saddened. Earth bloomed and birds 
called and the breath of coming summer 
made promises for which there was no 
earthly fulfillment. Even Simmons Street 
had veiled its squalor with new green. Mary 
Lee took a long look at the broken old houses 
that had put their clutch on her spirit that 
frozen day. In the May sun they showed a 
wan life. A woman was hanging out clothes, 
an old man rolled in a shawl sat patiently on 
his square of porch, a cat stalked something 
that rustled in the grass. A young man in a 
soldier blouse, swinging past on crutches, 
was something to tell Walter. The memory 
of his sympathetic, “Leg case, wasn’t it?” 
made her smile over a stab of pain. 

Simmons Street led her on across the rail¬ 
road tracks and mounted gently into a pleas¬ 
ant greenness, where there were old maples 
and a brook and a white farmhouse. In a 


202 


A LINE A DAY 


paddock beside the barn was a fine young 
horse, so like Ivan in his satiny brown coat 
that she leaned over the bars and coaxed him 
up to her with a handful of grass. He came 
in Ivan’s light-stepping fashion, considering 
her offering with high-bred snorts, but al¬ 
lowed her to stroke his nose as though she, 
too, resembled some old friend. 

“It is not fair to look so like Ivan,” she told 
him with a homesick sigh. And then, turn¬ 
ing to go, she stood transfixed at the sight 
of a Scottish terrier, trotting gravely down 
the road on some important business. 

“Leerie,” she cried. 

The terrier looked at her, at first absently, 
then with a quickening of all his little being; 
the short tail began to quiver. A second 
“Leerie!” settled the last doubt, and he flung 
himself upon her with yelps of pure joy. 
Mary Lee went on her knees to hug him. 
When she looked up, Walter stood in the 
doorway of the barn, smiling down on her. 

“Afternoon!” he greeted her. “Won’t you 
come in?” 

“Why, with pleasure,” said Mary Lee. 


A LINE A DAY 


203 


They shook hands as though there were 
nothing to explain. Walter’s faded blue shirt 
was turned in at the neck and chopped off at 
the elbows and from any civilized viewpoint 
he needed a hair-cut, but Mary Lee thought 
that she had never seen a figure of such 
beauty. 

“Two days more, and I’d have been in bet¬ 
ter shape to receive you,” he said, moving 
aside some planks that barred the entrance. 

“I can make allowances,” she assured him 
and paused on the threshold to look about. 
A secret fear that it was too good to be true, 
that she must be asleep and dreaming, made 
her press a finger against a protruding nail. 
The dream refused to break. 

Stalls and partitions had been cleared 
away, and the big bare place glistened with 
whitewash in the light of a huge window that 
had been let into the north wall. The model¬ 
ing stands already held the familiar studies 
and the tiger kittens raced about their feet. 
Two chairs, a table and a stove were the only 
furnishings. On the stairs to the loft sat the 
Purrmaid, staring strangely. Mary Lee 


204 


A LINE A DAY 


dropped down beside her with a sense of 
limp knees. 

“Have you been living long in these parts?” 
she asked politely. 

“Rather longer than you have.” Walter’s 
little agate eyes dared her, exulted at her. 
“You see, I couldn’t let you know until it was 
too late for you to stop it.” 

Mary Lee stroked the Purrmaid and con¬ 
sidered. “You think it is too late now?” 

“Oh, you wouldn’t have the heart when 
I’ve spent so much on the place! All that 
window and electricity and running water 
up-stairs,” he pleaded. “And I have done a 
lot of the carpentering with my own hands. 
You couldn’t, Mary Lee!” 

She refused to commit herself on that 
head. “You think then that Uplands is a good 
place for a sculptor?” 

“Best in America!” Walter took the bot¬ 
tom step, tilting back to look up at her. 
“Country life for the family; railway station 
close by, so that I can import materials and 
models; good climate; meals brought in from 
the farmhouse by a young Hebe who reads 


A LINE A DAY 


205 


the movie magazines and wears heels three 
inches high; work ordered that will take the 
next two years; and old friends living up in 
the town. Can you beat it?” 

Her slow headshake ended in the familiar, 
“Crazy boy!” 

“Oh, not so crazy,” Walter informed her 
with a sage nod. 

“No?” 

“No. This is the way I dope it out.” He 
paused to light a cigarette: “There’s the 
Nosey One with his old family home next 
door. He’ll be coming up Sundays to see his 
aged mother, won’t he? You bet your life he 
will!” 

“But I told you—” Mary Lee began. 

“Oh, yes; the best of friends and nothing 
more. But, just the same, little Walter 
thought he’d better be on the spot.” He 
laughed aloud. “It took me nearly twenty- 
four hours to think of it! I actually went and 
looked at studios that day. Then about dawn 
I got my great idea and came up on a milk 
train. I had to keep away from you after 
that. I was so afraid I’d spill it.” 


206 


A LINE A DAY 


“You might have hurt my feelings, keeping 
away just then,” she suggested. 

He looked up eagerly. “Did I?” 

“Yes, a little.” 

“Hooray!” He took her hand and kissed it. 
“Treat ’em rough—that’s the way to do it.” 

Mary Lee sat looking down at him with an 
amused smile. Floods of tenderness poured 
through her being, hymns of gladness re¬ 
sounded to heaven, and still she would have 
maintained that she was not in love with 
Walter. Any one would be happy in recover¬ 
ing so close and dear a friend. 

“How did you move out with the works 
and the family and I not see you?” she de¬ 
manded. “You were there in the evening 
and gone in the morning.” 

Walter laughed the laugh of the successful 
strategist. “Motor truck at four in the morn¬ 
ing! Leerie barked his silly head off; I kept 
expecting you to wake up and look out. I 
drove the truck myself all the way up here at 
about five miles an hour—I couldn’t trust the 
man not to bump things to pieces. You’re 
glad, aren’t you?” he added. “You don’t want 


A LINE A DAY 


207 


to show too much because it might give me 
false hopes, but you are a little glad, darling 
Mary Lee?” 

“Yes, I’m glad,” she said dryly, and then 
they burst into one of their old laughs. “Oh, 
yes, I’m really glad,” she insisted. 

“We’re getting on,” Walter assured her. 
“Look—there’s Hebe of the High Heels,” he 
interrupted himself. “She’s a product of 
Simmons Street, lives down there in the 
worst shanty of all with a feckless old grand¬ 
mother. Isn’t she amazing?” 

A girl was coming down the road, a tran¬ 
quil young goddess with a face as mild and 
vacant as that of the Jersey cow she was 
leading. Her limp cotton gown revealed 
lovely young lines. She looked as though her 
breath were sweet and her heels rosy. The 
absurd slippers and the frizzled blobs of hair 
over her ears were extraneous accidents. 

“When Hebe is dolled up to go to the post 
office, she’s a crime.” Walter spoke with 
lively amusement. “Look at the lines of her, 
and the natural grace! She could have a 
career as a model, that child.” 


208 


A LINE A DAY 


Mary Lee’s eyes followed gravely. “I 
wouldn’t put that idea into her head,” she 
said, and then, hearing the chill in her own 
voice, she tried to efface it with a quick 
laugh. “The village wouldn’t understand 
models.” 

Walter had a look of wisdom tempered by 
reserve. “Nina understands ’em,” he ob¬ 
served. “She asked me what they were get¬ 
ting this year, the first meal she brought me. 
The village isn’t so far behind!” 

The inner chill was spreading to her whole 
being. “She wants to pose for you?” 

“For anybody! But I told her she’d better 
stick to being the Murphys’ hired girl.” Wal¬ 
ter changed the subject. “Do you realize that 
I’m living on your Simmons Street? The far¬ 
ther you go, the tougher it gets, and I live in 
the last house on the street!” 

He walked home with her, so buoyantly 
and publicly hers that the secret chill was 
warmed away. And yet it left consequences. 
Fate gave her a chance to punish, and she 
made primitive use of it. 

“Oh, there’s George,” she said, pleased and 
welcoming. 


A LINE A DAY 


209 


George, walking down to his train, had 
been watching their approach. Being a suc¬ 
cessful lawyer, he showed no more than he 
wanted to. 

“How are you, Lucas?” he said genially. 

“He is living here;” Mary Lee explained it 
for him and George thought it a fine move. 
Walter stood by silent and unresponsive. 

“I’m going to Brewster to-night,” George 
kept on, “and I’m not coming back until I 
have made them give you the house outright. 
They will have to do it to get rid of me.” 

“You are good!” She was exaggeratedly 
grateful. “And when am I going to have that 
lesson in driving a car?” 

George might have returned that he had 
been haunting her door for two hours, trying 
to give it to her, but he only made a promise 
of next Sunday and went on to his train. 
Walter’s face had its hurt-angel look. 

“And I couldn’t do that for you. Nosey can 
pull things off,” he admitted sorrowfully. “If 
I went to the college, they’d say—” 

“Crazy boy,” she interrupted gaily. “Will 
you stay to supper in our own house?” 


210 


A LINE A DAY 


“No,” was the unhappy answer. “I’m go¬ 
ing back to work all night. I’ve got to be 
powerful and important—I can see that.” He 
took her hand, then dropped it with a sigh. 
“It’s an awful job to win a girl these days,” he 
said, and went away sorrowful, 

Mary Lee flew up-stairs in search of her 
mother and found her for once quite idle, 
lying on her bed with a look of pale exhaus¬ 
tion. She seemed tired beyond the power to 
listen. The tale of Walter’s move brought no 
response, but when she heard that George 
was going to Brewster, a flush transfigured 
her face and her fingers closed on the girl’s 
wrist with a force that hurt. 

“What is that? To make them take action? 
Tell me again,” she exclaimed, and rose up 
with the vigor of strong excitement. 

“I want to have a talk with Carrie. One of 
the Murray girls will stay with you, or you 
can go there. See if I can catch George’s 
train,” she commanded, moving about with 
tense haste. She made Mary Lee go out to 
telephone for a cab and to telegraph Carrie 
and she went off supperless, her eyes fixed 


A LINE A DAY 


211 


ahead. Mary Lee, noticing how her slender 
shoulder was dragged down by her bag, saw 
her as newly frail and felt a touch of fear. 
The nervous strain of weeks was beginning 
to tell; there was something feverish, abnor¬ 
mal, in her reception of the good news. 


CHAPTER XI 


Mrs. Lee came back the next night calmed 
and invigorated, walking with swift strength 
and making nothing of the bag that had 
looked so heavy when she went. She had had 
a lovely time with Carrie; they had talked all 
night, like two schoolgirls, and George had 
called her up there from Brewster to say that 
the house was theirs. 

“The house and everything in it,” she ex¬ 
ulted. “Carrie is so glad for us. She sent you a 
present, dear.” And she brought out a sum¬ 
mer blouse of delicate hand-work. There 
was one for Mrs. Lee as well. 

“But she shouldn’t have—it was all wrong. 
She hasn’t any money to spare,” Mary Lee 
protested. 

“Yes, she has. Things have been going well 
with Carrie,” was the buoyant answer. “I 
think she may be quite well off in the fut- 

212 


A LINE A DAY 


213 


ure.” Mrs. Lee was vague about the source 
of Carrie’s prosperity. “Oh, investments,” 
she said largely. 

“Well, it is very kind of her, but I wish she 
wouldn’t.” Mary Lee found the gift oppres¬ 
sive and refused to try it on. “I’ll thank her, 
but please don’t let her do it again,” she ex¬ 
claimed. 

Mrs. Lee was looking at her with a curi¬ 
ous intentness. “I wish you weren’t so diffi¬ 
cult,” she said. “I can’t trust you to be sen¬ 
sible and rational about things. You’d be 
quixotic. Why shouldn’t your mother’s old 
friend give you presents?” 

Mary Lee didn’t know why. “It bothers 
me,” she said impatiently. “If she wants to 
be nice to us she can send us some boarders.” 

“Boarders?” It was the first word that 
Mrs. Lee had heard about boarders, and she 
listened to Mary Lee’s plan with an unprom¬ 
ising frown. “But, owning the place, we 
wouldn’t have to come to that. You know, 
we have a little something.” 

“I didn’t suppose we had,” was the grave 


answer. 


214 


A LINE A DAY 


Mrs. Lee laughed at her. “There were al¬ 
ways some little tags of investments. That 
was one of the things I wanted to talk over 
with Carrie—she has great business ability. 
She thinks we can increase what I have into 
a very decent income. Her advice—why are 
you looking at me that way?” she broke off 
with a bewildering flare of temper. 

“Why, I wasn’t, mother,” Mary Lee apolo¬ 
gized. “I was only wishing that I might 
know about our affairs, just what we really 
have. Don’t you think I’m old enough to be 
a partner?” She was braced for displeasure, 
but Mrs. Lee was as suddenly gracious again. 

“Why, of course, dear, a little later, when 
things are more settled. I’m changing invest¬ 
ments now and don’t know myself how it 
will work out. Who was it that came home 
with you yesterday afternoon? Didn’t I hear 
a man’s voice?” 

Mary Lee told again about Walter’s re¬ 
moval to Uplands, but she was not sure that 
her mother listened. All the evening her 
inattention rose like a barrier between them. 
Mary Lee felt as if the familiar mother had 



A LINE A DAY 


215 


been replaced by a courteous stranger who 
smiled approvingly on her conversation but 
lived in a world apart. A small happening 
puzzled and hurt her. Mrs. Lee offered to 
enclose Mary Lee’s letter to Carrie in one of 
her own and Mary Lee herself posted the 
letter; but in cleaning out the kitchen stove 
the next day she found in the ashes a charred 
scrap of paper showing a couple of words in 
her own handwriting, words that had been 
in her letter to Carrie. Mary Lee pondered 
over it until she saw the touching explana¬ 
tion: 

“She wanted to spend a little, poor dear, 
and she knew I would call it extravagant, so 
she pretended the blouses were from Carrie. 
What a beast I have been!” 

She wore the new blouse that evening and 
took pains to praise it; but the incident left a 
vague uneasiness. She did not sleep well, 
and imagined that she heard sounds in the 
house. In the depths of the night there was 
unmistakably a quiet step on the uncarpeted 
stairs. Mary Lee, springing up and opening 
her door, saw her mother mounting, a 


216 


A LINE A DAY 


lighted candle in her hand. The flame 
played fantastic tricks with Mrs. Lee’s face; 
for an instant Mary Lee saw it as exultant, 
victorious. Then the candle was lifted and 
she saw only the familiar look of courtesy 
and weariness. 

“You must not be startled if I ramble about, 
dear,” Mrs. Lee said. “I often do, I sleep so 
badly. Run back to bed; don’t get all waked 
up.” And she blew out the light. 

Mary Lee obeyed in silence, but for a long 
time she sat upright in the darkness, staring 
an unhappy question; for in the quick lifting 
of the candle she had seemed to catch a 
gleam of lustrous silk about her mother’s 
shoulders. They owned no silk negligees. 
Mrs. Lee had clung to them, invented them, 
for years after the fall of their fortunes, but 
even her ingenuity had finally failed; and 
this glimpse had been of new, rich silk—un¬ 
less it was all imagination. 

“Is it really from Carrie? And did she 
hide it from me because I was so horrid 
about my blouse?” she wondered. But in that 
case why had her letter been burned? It was 


A LINE A DAY 


217 


a nice letter. The end of her questionings 
was a desire to see Walter. Whatever hap¬ 
pened, her impulse was to run to him with it. 
The crazy boy had something that was better 
than George’s common sense. George was 
rational and Walter was divinely right. 

After her broken night Mary Lee slept late. 
In the strong moment of awakening it 
seemed simple enough to ask her mother 
about that glimpse of silk, and throwing on 
her own faded old kimono, she hurried to put 
the question before it should again become 
difficult. 

“Mother?” she called down the stairs, but 
no one answered. Mrs. Lee’s door was open 
and her room already in its immaculate or¬ 
der. A note lay on the bureau: 

“Darling, I want to see Carrie again, so I 
am taking the early train. I expect to be back 
to-night. Mother.” 

Mary Lee stood hesitating; then, unhap¬ 
pily, hating the act, she opened her mother’s 
closet door and looked inside. There was no 
silk negligee, nothing but the familiar worn 
clothes, each on its careful hanger. Mary 


218 


A LINE A DAY 


Lee turned to the bureau, but the sense that 
her mother was watching her with eyes of 
quiet scorn made her hands drop to her side. 
No lady would search her mother’s posses¬ 
sions behind her back! 

“But I’d rather know than be a lady. I 
can’t stand this living in a fog,” Mary Lee 
protested, and after a nervous look over the 
bannisters, she came back to the tantalizing 
drawers; but she might as well have obeyed 
her scruples, for they were locked. 

It was a miserable, apprehensive day. 
Walter had not come back since she had 
punished him for his Hebe with George, and 
he had no telephone, so she could not send 
him the cheerfully casual summons that her 
feminine instincts demanded. Gusts of rain 
kept her indoors, and though there was 
plenty to be done, her hands refused, her 
mind turned from the familiar tasks with a 
sick repulsion. 

She wandered from room to room, staring 
from the windows like a prisoner. Before the 
day ended she was even searching fitfully in 
absurd places, as her mother did, for the lost 
will. 


A LINE A DAY 


219 


“Oh, we shall both go crazy. I wish we 
had never heard of Grandfather Lee,” she 
burst out, angry for the futile, wasted day. 
The sound of a stopping cab brought her 
hurrying down to throw open the front door. 

A transparent raincoat of a strong purple, 
filled with solid bulk, was coming buoyantly 
up the path under an umbrella. At the open¬ 
ing of the door the umbrella shifted and a 
blooming face, too broad for the small hat 
above, shone cheerfulness and sense on a 
foggy world. 

“Julia!” Mary Lee took her cousin into a 
wide embrace. “Why, Julie, I do believe I’m 
fond of you,” she marveled. 

Julia’s laugh was good to hear. 

“Well, I met your mother,” she explained, 
putting down a small bag in the hall and 
peeling off large storm rubbers. “Or, rather, 
she summoned me regally from a taxi, and 
asked me if I wouldn’t come up to spend the 
night with you, as she wanted to stay in town. 
And, as there is no school to-morrow, here I 
am.” She looked about her with lively inter¬ 
est. “Well, the place certainly has a differ¬ 
ent smell!” 


220 


A LINE A DAY 


“I hope it hasn’t any smell,” said Mary Lee. 

“That’s what I mean;” Julia, standing in 
the doorway of the ancient front parlor, 
could smile at the memory of that grim visit. 
The folding doors were wide open now, the 
inlaid floor polished to a dim gentility. The 
long, narrow windows looked austere with¬ 
out curtains, but to any one who had breathed 
the musty draperies of Austin Lee’s day aus¬ 
terity was good: newly oiled shutters, folded 
back into the deep casements, could give pri¬ 
vacy. Beneath the fluted balustrades and 
mirrors of the mantelpiece the tall black 
stove stood out like a vulgar fact. 

“There’s his chair—I can see him in it; and 
that awful stove.” The mere memory of it 
could make Julia hot. “Why don’t you take 
it down and have the open fireplace?” 

“Because, my dear Julia, that would need 
a man; and men are dollars and dollars a 
day,” Mary Lee pointed out. 

Julia poked at the bricks as though she 
would have liked to take hold herself: then 
she inspected the other rooms and told Mary 
Lee in detail how to run a boarding-house. 


A LINE A DAY 


221 


She was in splendid form. Something was 
still making her extraordinarily happy. 

“Do you see anything of George?” Mary 
Lee asked casually as they made up the bed 
together. Julia was to sleep in Mrs. Lee’s 
room, as no other was in order. 

“Oh, yes, very often.” Julia smiled to her¬ 
self, a quirk of amused power at the base of 
her nose, and for the moment some further 
speech was imminent. Then she passed on 
to the proper way of tucking in at the foot, 
leaving Mary Lee with a heart futilely 
pounding. Julia ought to be told at once 
where George’s heart was. It would be cruel, 
indecent, to let her betray herself in words. 

“The country agrees with your mother. She 
looked ten years younger,” Julia was saying 
when Mary Lee’s attention came back. “You 
are not pretending that she made that black 
and white suit, are you?” 

“Her black suit? She has remade it some 
seven times, poor dear.” Mary Lee patted 
her mother’s pillow with absent compassion. 
“George comes up occasionally,” she went on, 
busying herself in the closet that she need 


222 


A LINE A DAY 


not meet her cousin’s eyes. It was horrible 
to have to hurt Julia. 

“I never saw that suit before,” Julia per¬ 
sisted. “How can she make old silk look like 
that?” 

“Silk! It’s serge.” 

“My child, it was silk, with fringe a foot 
deep. Looked to me like a Paris model—not 
that I know one when I see it.” 

Mary Lee had come out of the closet to 
stare her astonishment. “She has bought a 
new one, that’s all,” she said slowly, then 
added a quick, “I am glad! She hasn’t had 
anything for so long.” 

Julia did not see why Mrs. Lee needed such 
elegance in Uplands, especially if she were 
planning to run a boarding-house. 

“But she isn’t planning anything of the 
kind,” Mary Lee admitted. “That is my 
scheme. She thinks we shall have enough to 
live on.” 

“I’d like to know how,” said Julia, and 
went into figures to prove that an investment 
of at least thirty thousand dollars would be 
necessary. “Neither your father nor mine 


A LINE A DAY 


223 


kept a cent out of the failure, and she hasn’t 
earned thirty thousand dollars painting por¬ 
traits,” she said with her inexorable exacti¬ 
tude. 

“I have never understood just how we 
managed to live,” Mary Lee said unhappily. 
“But we don’t run up bills, Julie. I know 
that.” There was no getting back to George 
then. 

Julia radiated cheer and helpfulness. She 
was heart-breakingly happy. No detail of 
their practical life was too small to interest 
her, no problem too big for her to grasp and 
settle. She had brought examination papers 
to go over and she shut herself up with them 
all the next morning, yet her presence per¬ 
vaded the house like a new force. When she 
emerged, her eyes alert for some new busi¬ 
ness to be put through, Mary Lee made a 
blind rush at her sorry task. 

“Julia, I’m troubled about George.” She 
was cutting bread and so could keep her eyes 
lowered. “He insists that he is in love with 
me. I don’t want him. But there he is.” 

Julia laughed, a comfortable little note. 


224 


A LINE A DAY 


“You don’t have to take him,” she pointed 
out. “It isn’t exactly news to me,” she added, 
and laughed again. 

Mary Lee’s quick turn would have caught 
any change of color, any mark of pain; but 
Julia was placidly herself. 

“You don’t care for him, Julie?” 

“I do not.” 

“Oh-h!” It was a breath of utter relief. 
“Then what has been making you so boiling 
gay?” Mary Lee demanded, indignant for her 
wasted compassion. “You have been a dif¬ 
ferent person this spring. What is it?” 

Julia hesitated, then slowly, reluctantly, 
gave up her secret. “For years I have had a 
ghost. Most of the time I forgot it, but now 
and then it walked and made me unhappy. 
Made me feel that perhaps I had missed 
something big, missed even the whole middle 
of life.” 

“I know, I know!” Mary Lee exclaimed. “I 
had a ghost, too. And then I came face to 
face with the man on a street corner, and he 
wasn’t anything to me, and the ghost never 
cheeped again.” 


A LINE A DAY 


225 


“Exactly!” Julia rejoiced in such under¬ 
standing. “I have laid my ghost. It would 
have been disaster—a limited, hide-bound 
intellect that no new idea can penetrate. Oh, 
if my senses had fooled me into that—! I’ve 
laid my ghost forever, and it is like having 
an old chain struck off. I’m free now—noth¬ 
ing can stop me. I know my way.” 

In her swelling relief Mary Lee put a hand 
on her cousin’s shoulder. “But somebody 
ought to love George, he is so good and kind 
and solid,” she argued. “I don’t much mind 
his opinions, and it would solve all our 
troubles. Why can’t I care for him, Julie?” 

Julia gave her a shrewd look, started to say 
something, then changed her mind. “Oh, you 
will probably throw yourself away on some 
irresponsible artist who doesn’t know the 
first principles of citizenship,” she said. “The 
sort of man who says that any one can have 
his vote.” 

Mary Lee went back to her loaf of bread. 
“Well, he will know a sky from a ceiling, 
anyway,” she said after a pause. 

“Most of the world’s work is done under 


226 


A LINE A DAY 


ceilings,” Julia pointed out. “Aren’t you cut¬ 
ting a good deal of bread for two persons?” 

Mary Lee dropped the knife. “I am a great 
bread eater,” she said, and unflinchingly 
gathered up her slices; hut when Julia had 
turned away she sank into the nearest chair. 
Again the drums of life were beating; but 
never before had they rolled out such a peal. 
It shook the walls of her being. She felt Wal¬ 
ter calling her, as really as though his voice 
had spoken, and she sent a silent answer: 
“Walter—Walter!” Surely he would hear. 
It could not be all in her own mind, this con¬ 
sciousness of communication. She looked at 
the clock—a quarter before one. She would 
ask him if at that moment his heart had 
cried out to hers, and tell him how, at last, 
hers had answered. Not in love with Wal¬ 
ter! That had been a game, a pretending. 
She loved him with every pulse of her body 
as well as with all her mind and soul. 

“I think the country has done you good, 
Mary,” was Julia’s verdict that afternoon as 
she stood in the hall drawing on her gloves. 
“I have never seen you in better spirits.” 


A LINE A DAY 


227 


“You have done me good,” said Mary Lee, 
and marveled at the safety of secrets. She 
had been shouting hers for two hours in her 
absent vagaries of speech and act; she had 
felt it shining out through every silent laugh, 
and yet Julia, who had divined something be¬ 
fore it was true, now saw nothing but good 
spirits. “Do come again,” she urged. 

“I will.” Julia started to go, then turned 
back. “Oh, here is a key I picked up under 
the bed. It may have dropped out when we 
turned the mattress. It looks like the key 
of a tin box.” 

Mary Lee took the key without interest 
and dropped it into the pocket of the old 
sports skirt she was wearing. “We haven’t 
any tin box, or any valuables to lock up in 
it,” she said. “It makes one feel very safe.” 

Julia lingered on the steps as though loath 
to go. “Walk to the train with me,” she sug¬ 
gested, but nothing could have persuaded 
Mary Lee to leave the house. Walter and she 
had spoken across space, and he would come. 

He came very soon, full of wicked amuse¬ 
ment, for he had met Julia on the way. 


228 


A LINE A DAY 


“What did she say?” Mary Lee asked, 
ready to laugh with him. 

“She stopped short and said, ‘Well, of 
course!’ Now, what did she mean by that?” 
Walter wanted to know. 

Mary Lee had a sudden misgiving about 
the safety of secrets, and it sent the color 
into her cheeks. “Why didn’t you ask her to 
explain?” she demanded. 

“So I did, and she replied that you had a 
stove you wanted taken down. The idea was 
that, being a sort of mechanic, I might as 
well make myself useful.” 

“Sensible Julia! There’s the stove.” And 
Mary Lee settled down in her grandfather’s 
chair as though to watch his labors. 

Walter had only a vague glance for the 
stove. He wandered about the rooms, star¬ 
ing from the windows in turn and giving ab¬ 
sent answers. 

“It’s coming—it’s coming!” was her secret 
cry as she sat with quietly folded hands and 
head dropped back, watching him. “My dear 
love—my beloved boy—it’s coming!” 

Becoming aware of her silence, Walter 


A LINE A DAY 


229 


swung on his heel and stood before her, 
hands sunk in his pockets, little agate eyes 
alive with excitement. 

“I’ve had an experience,” he began, then 
paused. 

Mary Lee had had one, too. “What time 
was it?” she asked. 

“Time? Oh, half past twelve or so, per¬ 
haps a little later. I had worked up a lot of 
clay—I had a new idea and I wanted to try 
it while it was hot in my mind. Nina brought 
in my lunch, but I didn’t even look around. 
‘Set it down anywhere,’ I said, and then I 
heard the door shut and supposed she had 
gone.” 

He paused again, and Mary Lee breathed a 
difficult, “Yes.” This did not sound like the 
counterpart to her experience. 

“And then suddenly she spoke behind me, 
as cool as you please,” he went on. “ ‘Make 
a statue of me,’ she said. And there she was. 
I protested, but she has posed for a lot of 
painters who have been up here. She was 
perfectly straight and simple about it. I had 
to work like lightning—she couldn’t stay 


230 


A LINE A DAY 


long. But I got something—something good. 
Perhaps the best yet. Glory, but she is beau¬ 
tiful ! I want you to see it.” 

The drums of life were silent. Mary Lee 
was looking at him with an odd smile. “So 
that was what you were doing, about quarter 
of one!” 

“Yes. Why? Did you go by or anything?” 

“I was near,” she said. “Life is funny! 
That was very interesting for you, Walter. 
She will have to pose for you again, won’t 
she?” 

“Oh, a few times. I’ll pay her well.” He 
dropped into a chair as though suddenly con¬ 
scious of a tired body. “It was so sure, from 
the first moment—what I wanted to do. I’m 
growing, my dear; I’m getting somewhere. It 
is coming fast.” 

She let him talk on about his work, giving 
him the comradely friendliness she had al¬ 
ways shown. Inwardly she was telling her¬ 
self with dreary iteration, “I’m being silly. A 
sculptor has to have models; I am not fit to 
love him if I can’t stand that. It’s a matter 
of course to him.” But the wise reasoning 


A LINE A DAY 


231 


of her brain could not lift the cold depression 
of her heart. Had Walter been in his usual 
mood, openly and enthusiastically hers, he 
could have made everything right with a 
single audacity; but to-day he was a creator 
of images rather than a lover. When his 
theme ran out he again took to wandering 
about the room, and presently came back to 
the stove. 

“If I don’t take it down, how am I going to 
lie on your hearth rug?” he demanded, stoop¬ 
ing to examine the bricked-up fireplace, and 
Mary Lee had sunk so low that there was a 
wan cheer in that—that he still wanted to 
lie on her hearth rug. 

“The old marble mantelpiece is in the attic. 
While you are about it, you might put that 
back,” she suggested. “It is an adorable 
thing, with trails of grapes.” 

“I will. It would be a joy to pull down this 
abomination.” And Walter shook the wooden 
balustrades of the mantelpiece to see how 
solid the abomination was. 

“What are you doing?” The question was 
hurled from the opening front door, and Mrs. 


232 


A LINE A DAY 


Lee came in in a white blaze of anger. “What 
are you both doing behind my back?” 

“Nothing, dear, nothing whatever,” Mary 
Lee spoke soothingly, as though she dealt 
with a sick person. “We were talking of tak¬ 
ing down the stove and putting back the old 
marble mantelpiece. Walter would do it for 
us.” 

Mrs. Lee’s look bored into the troubled sin¬ 
cerity of her face, but was not softened. “I 
don’t wish it changed. I don’t care to have 
Walter poking and prying about this house. 
Please remember that,” she said harshly. 
“When we want changes made, we can em¬ 
ploy workmen to do it.” And, putting down 
her bag, she sat stiffly in the nearest chair as 
though to see that nothing more were 
attempted. 

“I’m awfully sorry, Mrs. Lee.” Walter 
looked touchingly young in his bewilder¬ 
ment. “Please forgive me—I meant so well!” 

Mrs. Lee gave no sign of having heard, and 
Mary Lee answered his silent, “Shall I go?” 
with a nod. She followed him for a whis¬ 
pered word on the steps. 


A LINE A DAY 


233 


“It is that abominable will,” she said. “She 
has hunted for it until, truly, Walter, I think 
she is growing unbalanced.” 

Walter had her hand in both his. “My 
poor dear,” he murmured, and a stealing 
warmth returned to her chilled being. 

“It is terrible to want money as she wants 
it!” 

He nodded his understanding. “It’s a pas¬ 
sion, like gambling or drink. I wish—” He 
checked himself to murmur, “Don’t look 
around. She is watching us from the win¬ 
dow.” 

“Come again soon, Walter,” Mary Lee said 
with cheerful distinctness, and they ex¬ 
changed commonplaces for a few moments, 
then she went in with determined serenity. 
Mrs. Lee had gone up to her room and was 
taking off the old serge suit. She spoke of 
her trip and of Julia as though nothing had 
happened, then, lying down, begged to be 
read to. It seemed to Mary Lee that her 
mother clung to her that night, and she was 
touched, and did her best not to slip off in 
her thoughts to Walter. His handclasp had 



234 


A LINE A DAY 


left reverberating echoes; but when, watch¬ 
ing the moon rise, she felt again that poig¬ 
nant summons, she smiled wryly and refused 
to look at the clock. No doubt Walter again 
had a model! 

Mary Lee slept fitfully that night, and at 
every awakening she seemed to hear steps 
and movement in her mother’s room. There 
was even the roll of furniture and an occa¬ 
sional jarring of the wall. She would have 
gone in but for a memory of the mysterious 
silk garment and the hastily blown out 
candle. 

“I don’t want to catch her in anything if 
she doesn’t want to be caught,” she thought 
unhappily. At last she called out: 

“Mother! Can’t you sleep?” 

Absolute silence followed, a rigid silence, 
as though even breath were checked. 

“Mother!” Mary Lee insisted, a frightened 
note in her voice. 

“All right, my dear. Go back to sleep,” 
was the soothing answer, and no more 
sounds came; but Mary Lee, lying wide 
awake, felt that her quiet mother was also 


A LINE A DAY 


235 


staring into the darkness on the other side of 
the wall. 

In the morning Mrs. Lee was graciously 
apologetic, as though she had disturbed a so¬ 
cial acquaintance. 

“Older people don’t need sleep as girls do,” 
she explained. “It would be a great relief to 
me to move about without feeling that I was 
disturbing you. Would you mind if I slept 
down-stairs? We don’t need that back par¬ 
lor; it would make a very nice bedroom for 
me.” 

Mary Lee did not like the idea at all. If 
she had callers, her mother would be kept 
awake. It could not possibly be as comfort¬ 
able as the airy corner room up-stairs. She 
argued until Mrs. Lee cut her short with a 
cold: 

“What is your real objection, Mary Lee?” 
Her eyes were those of an enemy. 

“Mother! Don’t look at me like that!” 
Mary Lee stammered. “I only want what is 
good for you.” She saw a troubled softening, 
and hurried on. “Everything is so horrid 
and unreal and unnatural! Can’t we forget 



236 


A LINE A DAY 


about the stupid money and go on living? 
People don’t hide wills—why hide them? 
They burn them up. Please, please let us go 
honestly to work and get out of this awful 
fog!” 

Mrs. Lee had listened intently, as though 
Mary Lee might say more than she knew. 
“What do you mean by fog?” she asked. 

“Oh, queerness—secrets—things hidden! 
If you have new clothes, why can’t I know 
it? I shouldn’t grudge you a silk negligee, 
mother, or a new suit, or anything. Only I 
want it all open and explained. It is not fair 
to keep me in the dark!” 

Mrs. Lee listened, weighed, considered. 
“You are quite sure you don’t keep me in the 
dark?” she asked with a sudden look. 

“I don’t think I do.” 

“You haven’t found anything?” 

Mary Lee laughed forlornly. “Oh, my 
dear, if I found that hateful will. I’d shout it 
from the house tops. Anything to get it over 
with. No—I haven’t found a thing.” 

It was a difficult day. Mary Lee could not 
decide whether her mother clung to her in 


A LINE A DAY 


237 


need or watched her in suspicion; she cer¬ 
tainly did not leave her ten minutes alone. 
When Mary Lee suggested a walk, she found 
herself too tired, but urged her daughter to 
go, and made out a list of errands to be done 
in the village. 

“It will save my going, dear,” she said. 
“And I think I can get a nap.” 

The errands did not seem to Mary Lee very 
important and the village shops, which usu¬ 
ally amused her, to-day were exasperating 
in their leisure and informality. She cut out 
half the list and flew home, not admitting 
why she hurried so tensely until Walter’s 
name tucked under the front door brought 
her to a shocked halt. 

“Oh, no fair!” she protested with a breath 
that was half a sob. She did need Walter. 

She stole up-stairs, supposing her mother 
asleep behind her closed door, then stopped 
amazed in her own doorway. She surely had 
not left her bureau drawers open! A sound 
of movement in her closet brought a cry to 
her lips, but it stopped there and she waited 
with an awful interest. She had always 


238 


A LINE A DAY 


wondered how she would behave in an en¬ 
counter with a burglar, and now she was 
about to find out. Then the cry broke forth, 
a note of dismay, for it was her mother who 
came out. 

“Mother!” she breathed, pleading that she 
need not believe her eyes. 

Mrs. Lee had started; then she smiled, a 
small, cold, cruel smile and went out of the 
room without a word. One hand was clasped, 
and she slightly raised it as she passed Mary 
Lee, as though she triumphed. Her door 
closed behind her. 

The open drawers were in their usual or¬ 
der, nothing in the closet had been disturbed 
except that an old sports skirt lay on the 
floor. Mary Lee had to accept the crushing 
truth: her mother’s mind was breaking. 

When Mrs. Lee came down she found a 
gentle, considerate daughter preparing her 
supper. Their eyes met, but Mary Lee’s asked 
no questions, held no memory of that bitter 
moment up-stairs; they only smiled mother- 
ingly. She was funny at supper, seemingly 
unaware that there was little response. 





A LINE A DAY 


239 


When Mrs. Lee, braced for combat, an¬ 
nounced that she was going to sleep on the 
couch in the back parlor, Mary Lee cheer¬ 
fully brought bedding and made ready for 
her. 

“Now you can ramble about and not feel 
that you are disturbing me,” she said. “But 
if you want anything, call out.” 

“I shall not, my dear. Shut your door and 
sleep well,” was the gracious response but 
the eyes that avoided hers were not gracious; 
no kindness could break through the barrier 
between them. 

Mary Lee shut her door loudly and left it 
so for a long time. Once she thought her 
mother came up-stairs as though to be sure it 
was shut, but she might have imagined it; 
the old house creaked and snapped on quiet 
nights. Toward midnight she stole into the 
hall to listen. 

A thread of light outlined the door of the 
front parlor, and Mary Lee, creeping down, 
heard movement within. The back parlor 
seemed to be dark and, remembering that its 
door would not lock, she opened it without 


240 


A LINE A DAY 


sound, an inch at a time. The sliding doors 
between the two rooms were shut, and 
against the light she could see the bar of the 
turned lock; the crack between them would 
be wide enough to show other things if her 
mother were within range. 

“If she catches me, she will never forgive 
me,” she thought, hesitating. Then the fear 
of what the disordered mind might be con¬ 
triving drove her on. 

The doors were so warped that she could 
see from the brightly burning chandelier in 
the middle of the room almost to the chim¬ 
ney on the side wall. Mrs. Lee stood on a 
chair beside the stove, wrapped in a negligee 
of iridescent silk, her hands busy with the 
ornate mantelpiece. What they touched was 
just out of range, but presently she turned to 
the light and seemed to be making a mur¬ 
mured count. Mary Lee, pressing closer, saw 
that she held money, a great, soiled roll. 

She must have made some sound, for the 
counting hands stopped, paralyzed. 

“Yes, I am here,” she said quietly. “Open 
the door at once.” 






A LINE A DAY 


241 


Mrs. Lee obeyed. The roll of bills in her 
hand was as big as a grapefruit. A mirror on 
the left of the mantelpiece had been pried 
off, and within was a large metal box, rest¬ 
ing in a rough breach that had been made in 
the chimney. In the box was a key suddenly 
familiar. 

“Oh, that is what you were looking for— 
that little key,” Mary Lee said, her casual, 
every-day voice sounding strangely loud 
against Mrs. Lee’s tense silence. No objec¬ 
tion was offered as she mounted the chair 
and looked into the chest, wedged between 
the chimney wall and a stove pipe sheathed 
in asbestos. It was nearly filled with similar 
rolls of bills; in the center was a canvas sack, 
untied, and her groping hands spilled a trail 
of diamonds among the bills. Their sudden 
brilliance made her exclaim and shrink back 
as though from some living danger. 

“Well, here is the rest of the five millions, 
evidently,” she observed. “I suppose this 
was the old man’s way of dodging the inheri¬ 
tance tax.” She jumped down, still avoiding 
her mother’s eyes. “When did you find it?” 


242 


A LINE A DAY 


Mrs. Lee had seated herself in the grand¬ 
father’s chair, holding her roll of bills as 
quietly as though it were a ball of wool. The 
outside one was marked $500. 

“Several days ago. I don’t remember ex¬ 
actly,” she said indifferently. 

It flashed through Mary Lee’s mind, “This 
is a fight to the death!” She seated herself 
that she might not seem to be trying for the 
advantage of the superior position, and drew 
her kimono tightly about her, for, though the 
night was warm, she shivered. Her mother 
in her silken elegance, her hair still folded 
gracefully on her head, sitting at negligent 
ease instead of huddled in faded cotton, al¬ 
ready looked the victor. 

“This is all the fights I haven’t had, all the 
things I hated but let go because I didn’t 
want to hurt her,” Mary Lee’s illumined 
thought flashed on. “The portrait-snatching, 
the pretending, the looks—looks—looks. If 
I had fought from the beginning, we should 
not be here to-night.” Then she straightened 
up to it. 

“I know when it w T as,” she said. “The day 



A LINE A DAY 


243 


I found Walter, and George promised to go 
to Brewster. You were lying on your bed 
and at first I couldn't make you listen. You 
had found it then, hadn’t you?” 

“Possibly,” was the cool admission. 

“Yes,” Mary Lee insisted, “that was it. As 
soon as you heard that George was going to 
get us the house—” 

Mrs. Lee interrupted with quiet emphasis: 
“The house and its contents.” 

“Yes—meaning the furniture, so that we 
might earn our living,” Mary Lee returned 
the challenge. “Then you hurried down to 
town and talked it over with Carrie. And 
yesterday you thought I had found it out—I 
don’t wonder, with Walter shaking down the 
mantelpiece, and the key in my pocket. But 
I hadn’t. You believe that now, don’t you?” 

“I saw that nothing had been taken,” Mrs. 
Lee conceded. 

“Taken!” Mary Lee dropped sparring and 
made the first lunge. “You don’t suppose I 
would take money that isn’t ours?” 

Her mother’s smile was ironically patient. 
“Why isn’t it ours?” 



244 


A LINE A DAY 


“Because Grandfather Lee left everything 
of which he died possessed to Brewster Col¬ 
lege” 

“In a will which he did not intend to have 
carried out! Brewster College has no moral 
right to a single penny of his estate.” Mrs. 
Lee said “moral right” triumphantly, as 
though she turned Mary Lee’s best weapon 
against herself. “It has legal possession—we 
can’t help that. And it has promised us legal 
possession of everything in this house—it 
can’t help that. This box is ours, both mor¬ 
ally and legally, my child. You can argue all 
night, but you can’t change the facts.” 

She was so certain, so authoritative, that 
for a moment Mary Lee’s faculties were 
stampeded and she could not find her truth; 
then the central, dominating reason shone 
out through the beclouding logic. 

“But, mother, it couldn’t be told!” she 
cried. 

“Who wants to tell?” was the contemptu¬ 
ous answer. 

“It could be kept only in secret,” Mary Lee 
persisted. “Sneaking it out of the house lit- 


A LINE A DAY 


245 


tie by little, investing in roundabout ways so 
as not to draw attention, getting up some 
story to explain why we were prosperous. 
Don’t you see how that makes it crooked? 
All our life a hiding and a pretense. Never— 
never—never!” 

She sprang up as though to go and tell that 
instant, but Mrs. Lee was unmoved. 

“I am going to keep it,” she said. 

They measured each other in a long look. 

“The law wouldn’t help you,” Mary Lee 
warned her. “We haven’t even got the deed 
to the house yet, only a promise. And if we 
had, the law wouldn’t let us keep a fortune 
when the giver didn’t know it was there.” 

“I shall not ask the law’s help;” Mrs. Lee’s 
lips barely moved. 

“Ah, mother!” Mary Lee dropped on her 
knees by her mother’s chair, putting a shaken 
hand over hers. “I know—you have had 
such an awful time, such a hard life! This 
must look like heaven to you. I do under¬ 
stand. But there wouldn’t be an hour’s hap¬ 
piness in it, not one. I will take over the 
family load, I can earn our living. You don’t 


246 


A LINE A DAY 


half know how able I am. You needn’t have 
any of the care and worry. Oh, my dear, I’ll 
work till I drop, hut I can’t, can’t live with a 
secret.” Tears were on her face, dropping 
unheeded on their clasped hands; but Mrs. 
Lee had fortified herself for every method 
of attack and nothing could get through her 
defense. 

“You are young and emotional,” she said 
wearily. “It is easy to say. Til do this’ and 
‘I’ll do that’—because you don’t know the 
difficulties. I do. You can make it very 
hard for us both; but you can’t change any¬ 
thing. And some day you will see that I 
knew best.” 

Mary Lee rose to her feet and dried her 
eyes. “You can’t keep me from telling,” she 
warned solemnly. 

Her mother found the answer to that child¬ 
ishly easy. “Well, they would find the box 
there, and something in it. You can’t tell 
them how much it held. I don’t even know 
myself, yet.” 

Mary Lee went slowly to the door. She 
had one more blow, but she could not look 


A LINE A DAY 


247 


at her mother while she delivered it. She 
put a supporting hand on the door frame and 
hid her face against her arm. 

“You can’t keep the money and keep me, 
too,” she said. “Does the money mean more 
to you than I do?” 

A sharp sigh answered. “Please, Mary Lee, 
no more heroics! And try to have a little 
faith in your mother’s judgment. Do you 
suppose that there is any aspect of this that I 
haven’t considered? I know that I am right.” 

Mary Lee straightened up, and for a mo¬ 
ment their eyes met. “You won’t keep it,” 
she said suddenly. “You believe you will, but 
you won’t.” And she went quickly, closing 
the door before Mrs. Lee could answer. 


CHAPTER XII 


Mary Lee’s dearest virtue was her power 
to hide what she was feeling, to keep up a 
blithe spirit like a flying banner over a weary 
march; but now her one hope of victory lay 
in showing what she felt, showing it to the 
depths. The dropping of her gay courage, 
the next morning, uncovered other marks of 
experience beside the shadow of last night, 
and any one who loved her must have been 
touched. Mrs. Lee, after one glance, kept her 
eyes averted. They scarcely exchanged a 
dozen words that day or the next. Both 
wasted visibly under the strain; they heard 
each other sigh and turn in sleepless nights, 
they took out food and put it away uneaten; 
but neither yielded an inch. It was a fight to 
the death. On the third morning Mrs. Lee 
came down dressed for town. 

“I am going down to see Carrie,” she said, 
r tone carefully casual. 

248 


A LINE A DAY 


249 


“I don’t care what Carrie says—you can’t 
do it,” said Mary Lee. 

i 

Mrs. Lee would not reopen the subject. She 
let a cold pause mark her displeasure, then 
insisted that Mary Lee ask one of the Murray 
girls to spend the night with her. 

“I don’t want you to stay here alone,” she 
reiterated as she finished her cup of coffee 
and rose. 

Mary Lee sat limply by the kitchen table, 
her head on her hand. 

“I couldn’t bear having any one here,” she 
said. “I am too mortally unhappy. I should 
tell her—I couldn’t help it. I can’t think of 
anything else.” 

Mrs. Lee winced as from bad taste. “Then 
I shall have to come home,” she said sharply, 
turning to go; and Mary Lee, who would nor¬ 
mally have done anything to oblige her moth¬ 
er, who would have called a cheerful good-by 
over any pain, did not speak or lift her head. 

“It is what I feel, not a shade more,” she 
said to an inner stirring of reproach. “It isn’t 
half what I feel,” she added desolately; for 
Walter had not come for two days. 


250 


A LINE A DAY 


The morning mail brought a note from 
him, explaining that he had been neck deep 
in a pageant and enclosing two tickets for that 
afternoon. 

“The director fell ill and I had to help 
them out,” he wrote. “It’s the usual scrambled 
allegory—Truth taking Justice by the hand— 
all that bunk. Fancy dancing, of course, of 
the See-the-Waterlily school. But the kids 
are great and Nina as the Spirit of Healing 
Love is worth going miles to see. Every 
movement she makes is naturally perfect 
Do come, you and your mother. I shall be 
busy during the performance, keeping the 
temperaments disentangled—I’d hate to tell 
you what Right Living said to High Thinking 
at to-day’s rehearsal and what H. T. an¬ 
swered—but I’ll see you afterward. Please 
be there, darling Mary Lee.” 

Mary Lee declared hotly that nothing 
could hire her to go. All day she was saying 
it in varying keys; yet at four o’clock she was 
seated in an obscure corner of the Country 
Club veranda, watching classic evolutions in 
home-dyed cheesecloth on the sunny lawn. 


A LINE A DAY 


251 


There were glimpses of Walter, startlingly 
fresh and smart in summer white, directing 
the marching files from behind the bushes, 
signaling the music, disentangling childish 
butterflies from infant poppies, and having a 
perfectly beautiful time. The eternal child 
in him could play harder than any of them. 
A neighbor, pointing him out to a companion, 
explained how famous he was, and how all 
the girls in the pageant were crazy about 
him. Mary Lee saw little of the allegorical 
pantomime, was only dimly aware of the ear¬ 
nest, hard-working dancers; for a merciful 
hour she forgot even her trouble at home. 
Her beloved was hers and she was his. 

The neighbor’s voice broke the enchant¬ 
ment. 

“I suppose they had to let Nina in because 
of her looks and all,” it was saying discon¬ 
tentedly. “But I do hate to have her associ¬ 
ating with my girls. I don’t see anything so 
wonderful about her, anyway. She’s got a 
kind of a stupid face, I think.” 

The Spirit of Healing Love was floating 
across the lawn in draperies as yellow as her 


252 


A LINE A DAY 


corn-silk hair, her bare feet supple as hands, 
her young body moving as naturally as a bird 
sings. A burst of applause, relievedly genu¬ 
ine, came from the veranda. Walter stood 
at the edge of the bushes, watching her over 
folded arms. Nina’s sweet vacancy had made 
her pliable to coaching, and her brief act 
stood out like a jewel among pebbles. The 
applause followed her off and drew her back 
to bow. Walter beamed on her, patting her 
shoulder as she passed. Mary Lee leaned 
back in her corner, her eyes on her clasped 
hands. 

“I didn’t know anything could hurt like 
this,” she told herself with dreary iteration. 
“And all the time I know I’m being a fool. 
It is very curious. Perhaps it is only because 
I am so unhappy anyway. Perhaps that 
makes everything hurt.” 

She would have slipped away without see¬ 
ing Walter; but the moment the audience 
rose he was stepping over chairs to join her. 

“I saw you come in,” he said, as though 
that had been a triumphant exploit. He was 
all hers, and any one in the grand-stand might 
know it. 


A LINE A DAY 


253 


“I said I was a fool,” she told herself, smil¬ 
ing silent greeting. The rush of her relief 
made any attempt at speech impossible. She 
let the crowd press her against his arm. Once 
outside the gates, they turned from the road 
to a field path. 

“Come down to my place and see what I 
have been doing,” Walter urged. 

The new summer was at its perfect mo¬ 
ment, the day at its perfect hour, its slanting 
sunlight as yet undimmed by the waiting bil¬ 
lows of cloud. They went down through 
white seas of daisies and golden streams of 
buttercups while the low green hills of noon 
took on the grape-blue and amethyst heights 
of evening. 

They scarcely noticed the squalor of Sim¬ 
mons Street. Ivan, whinnying over the fence, 
told them that they were home, and dogs and 
cats came racing to meet them. Walter 
closed the door after them and lifted wet 
cloths from a clay shape. 

“Like it?” he asked. 

The thing was startlingly beautiful. He 
had taken Nina’s lovely body and put into it 


254 


A LINE A DAY 


a listening spirit—a spirit that had called, 
and now stood quietly for the answer, ex¬ 
quisite in its waiting poise. 

“The Dawn,” Mary Lee said, sitting on the 
attic stairs and taking a kitten into her arms 
for comfort. “It is lovely, Walter, lovely. 
And it makes me feel a thousand years old. 
In heaven’s name, cover it up!” 

He laughed and obeyed. There were other 
things to show her, begun or projected; his 
joyous activity had even planned a severely 
classic dog-house for Wagner, and he was 
carving a chair in his leisure moments. 

“That is for you to sit in,” he explained. 
“Plain chairs aren’t good enough, darling 
Mary Lee.” 

“I ought to be going home,” she said weak¬ 
ly, but stayed on, heedless of time. Home 
seemed a dark and lonely place beside this 
whitewashed barn. Presently Walter brought 
out two apples, a cake of chocolate and a tin 
cup of water. 

“I told them not to send me any supper; I 
was going to beg it off you,” he said. “But 
what more do we want!” He pushed the 


A LINE A DAY 


255 


table in front of her, drew up a chair op¬ 
posite, and turned on his electric lights, for 
it had suddenly grown dark. “Will you carve, 
my dear, or shall I?” 

“Oh, that is what I like about you, Walter,” 
Mary Lee exclaimed. “You aren’t tied up by 
the machinery of living. You take bed and 
board casually—they’re only the starting 
point. You wouldn’t sell your soul for trim¬ 
mings !” 

“You can’t tell what darn fool thing I 
wouldn’t do,” said Walter comfortably, peel¬ 
ing the apples. “Here’s a wing for you, n^ 
dear, and a bit of breast. Have a Brussels 
sprout,” he added, breaking the chocolate. 

She tided to play up, to swing her end of 
the little game that had put color and charm 
into all their meetings, but her heart lagged. 
Love had given her a magic hour, but now 
its spell was lifted and her trouble came 
rushing back to overwhelm her. It was so 
horrible to be fighting one’s own mother. 
And it was sordid to be fighting for common 
honesty. This was a real trouble, not a shad¬ 
ow that could be cleared away. 


256 


A LINE A DAY 


“I can’t, I’m too unhappy,” she told her¬ 
self. “And showing it this morning was fatal. 
My banner is down, and I don’t know how 
to get it up again.” 

“You are looking straight at me and that 
gives an effect of listening,” Walter was say¬ 
ing patiently. “If it is the best you can do—” 

“I can’t help it, Walter.” Her trouble 
burst out: “Some one I love is doing some¬ 
thing that I hate, and I don’t know how to 
stop it!” 

The words left a stricken silence. Walter’s 
forehead slowly dropped to his clasped 
hands. 

“Gan you tell me what it is?” he asked 
presently, without looking up. 

“No.” 

“Sometimes men see things differently, 
A girl would hate it where a man would 
understand.” 

“No. There aren’t two ways to see this. 
And you can’t help me, Walter. No one 
could.” 

His voice came with difficulty: “And you 
can still—love?” 


A LINE A DAY 


257 


“Oh, yes. That is for life.” She tried for¬ 
lornly to laugh. “I did spoil the party, didn’t 
I? But it had to come out—I am so full of 
it. All night and all day. And it doesn’t pay 
to forget it, even for an hour, for then I get 
the blow all over again when I remember* 
It is best to stay right down in it.” 

“If I could just know—” Walter was begin¬ 
ning when a roll of thunder passed overhead, 
setting loose a torrent of rain. They hurried 
to shut windows and bar doors against the 
rush of the storm. With the second crash 
the lights went out. Kittens fled in terror 
and dogs pressed close to them for comfort. 

“Barns always get struck,” said Mary Lee 
cheeringly between the peals, and they 
laughed. Inwardly she was saying, “If I died 
now, she couldn’t do it!” 

He found his way to her in the next blaze 
of light. 

“Frightened?” 

“No. It would only be death.” 

“Then what are you afraid of, Mary Lee?” 

In the white flashes the little sheeted statue 
stood out, glorified. “Oh, of being hurt by 


258 


A LINE A DAY 


people I love!” Her voice shook, broke: 
“Common honesty, common decency, Wal¬ 
ter—that isn’t asking much!” 

He put his arms about her. “Just think of 
me as human comfort. You can forget it to¬ 
morrow,” he said against her hair. 

She pressed closer to him. “I don’t want to 
forget it,” she murmured, and then the 
strained nerves gave way and she sobbed 
helplessly. “Don’t mind. I’ll stop in a min¬ 
ute,” she kept telling him. “It is good for me 
but it’s horrid for you. It will be all over in 
no time. Please don’t mind!” 

He held her silently, very gently, and let 
her go at the first movement. 

“Well, I am glad it is dark;” Mary Lee was 
struggling back to her every-day tone with re¬ 
current gasps. “I apologize. I know that cry¬ 
ing on their shoulders has gone out, but I 
always longed to try it, and now I have. I 
don’t think so much of it. Now the sky has 
stopped crying too, hasn’t it? It’s time I went 
home.” 

Walter wanted to get a cab, but the rain 
had ceased and she insisted on walking. 


A LINE A DAY 


259 


“I want time to get my features straight¬ 
ened out,” she explained. On the way home 
the relief that follows tears kept her in lively 
spirits, but Walter scarcely spoke. 

The rain had only paused, and in the end 
they had to run, splashing through darkness, 
for the street lights were out. From the old 
house came a cheerful blaze of gas. All the 
rooms seemed to be lighted, up-stairs and 
down. As they ran up the steps the front door 
was thrown back and for an instant Mrs. Lee 
was revealed as a haggard figure of anxiety, 
an image of strained and tortured waiting. 

“Oh, where have you been!” It was a 
smothered cry. 

“Down at Walter’s place, caught in the 
rain,” was the indifferent answer. “Come in, 
Walter. I hope you weren’t worried?” 

Mrs. Lee turned away without answering. 
Perhaps she had needed the lights for long 
hours of pacing the house, for she went about 
turning them out while Mary Lee made 
chocolate in the kitchen and explored the re¬ 
frigerator for provisions. 

“You haven’t had supper yourself,” she re- 


260 


A LINE A DAY 


minded her mother, and Mrs. Lee sat down 
with them, but she was wordless and without 
appetite, and her eyes kept stealing back to 
the marks of tears on her daughter’s face. 
Walter was nearly as silent. After supper he 
would have hurried away, but the rain was 
falling in a steady torrent and Mary Lee in¬ 
sisted that he spend the night. 

“He can have the couch in the back parlor, 
can’t he, mother?” she asked, and she silenced 
Walter’s refusal with a low, “I like having 
you here!” Mrs. Lee went up-stairs without 
answering, and Walter had nothing to say to 
her, though she lingered, mutely asking for 
her lover. He would not let her make him 
comfortable. 

“I’ll curl up anywhere and slip away when 
the rain stops,” he insisted. “If I may read 
and smoke, I don’t want anything else.” 

He actually seemed to be waiting for her 
to go—Walter, who had always clung to 
every moment she would give him. And yet 
she had been in his arms. 

“Didn’t he like me there?” she wondered 
sadly as she trailed up-stairs on lagging feet. 


A LINE A DAY 


261 


It did not once occur to her to question what 
her half confession might have meant to him. 

Before she could shut her door her mother 
was fn the doorway. 

“Have you told Walter?” she asked, her 
stern undertone as hostile as her level look. 

“Oh, mother—no!” 

Mrs. Lee turned to go, then paused. “You 
have been crying!” It sounded like an accu¬ 
sation. 

Mary Lee dropped down on the side of her 
bed. “I have,” she said brokenly; “and I’m 
probably going to cry some more, so you’d 
better go away. But the money is perfectly 
safe down there. Walter doesn’t know a 
thing. I doubt if he would take it if he did 
know,” she added. Then she was sorry and 
wished that she had not said it; but there 
was no way to unsay things now, no way to 
be warm and apologetic. It was a fight to 
the death. 

Walter must have fallen asleep before the 
rain stopped, for it was broad daylight when 
Mary Lee was awakened by the shutting of 
the front door. From the window she 


262 


A LINE A DAY 


watched him going slowly down the avenue, 
his shoulders at a sorrowful droop. Was 
every one in the whole world sad? Her moth¬ 
er’s room, which had seemed to sigh and 
murmur all night, was very still now, so she 
dressed noiselessly and stole down-stairs, im¬ 
patient to open windows and let the morning 
splendor into the dim old rooms. 

Every leaf in the garden carried a mirror 
or a jewel. Mary Lee, going out for the morn¬ 
ing paper, felt a lifting of the spirit in an¬ 
swer to the June sun and song. There must 
be a way out of pain in a world so beautiful! 
Then from far down Simmons Avenue in the 
direction of Simmons Street she heard a 
sound of galloping hoofs, and her heart 
pounded a response. 

“My nerves are on edge,” she apologized, 
but waited to see who was riding so reck¬ 
lessly. 

They flashed past, Ivan at a leaping gallop, 
Walter clinging to his bare back, his hands 
twisted in the halter rope. It was a fighting 
Walter, torn, disheveled, grimly out for 
trouble; his speed was anger, not alarm. 


A LINE A DAY 


263 


Mary Lee ran to the gate, waiting there for a 
sequel, and very soon she heard a car coming 
back as furiously as Ivan had galloped. The 
town constable was driving, his star in evi¬ 
dence as his coat flew back; beside him sat 
Walter, sternly intent on getting somewhere. 
The back seat was piled with men. 

When the warning horn had died away, 
Mary Lee went back to the house and hesi¬ 
tated in the hall, a troubled glance lifted 
toward her mother’s silent room. Then she 
caught up her hat and ran out. A station 
taxicab was stopping at the gate, but she 
would have flown past without seeing it but 
for a sharp summons. Her mother was step¬ 
ping out. Mary Lee’s startled questions 
brought only a silencing gesture and a quick, 
“Come into the house at once.” Mrs. Lee 
kept a hand on her daughter’s arm until they 
were safely inside the door. 

“We have got to be very careful,” she be¬ 
gan, seating herself with circumspection, her 
voice as carefully lowered as though they 
were not alone in the house. 

Mary Lee twisted nervous hands together 


A LINE A DAY 


264 

\ 

< 

and waited. “If only Walter isn’t in trouble!” 
was her secret cry. 

i “A girl named Nina disappeared last night 
—didn’t come home,” Mrs. Lee went on, 
choosing her words with a fastidious distaste 
for the whole business. “From what I hear, 
it is not the first time; but her filthy, scream¬ 
ing old grandmother got all Simmons Street 
roused—people like that love a little excite¬ 
ment—and led a mob to Walter’s studio. The 
girl has been there a good deal and he has 
been silly enough to use her for a model. 
Well, of course, as we know, he was not at 
home.” 

“But, mother—surely you told them?” 
“Wait!” Mrs. Lee’s frown forbade heroics. 
“It would be simple enough to explain where 
Walter had spent the night if you had not be¬ 
haved with such imbecile imprudence. It 
seems that in the storm last evening some one 
stepped under the eaves of the barn for shel¬ 
ter and heard a girl sobbing inside. Don’t 
you see that we can’t lift a finger without ex¬ 
plaining who that girl was?” 

“Then why not explain it?” Mary Lee 


A LINE A DAY 


265 


spoke harshly. “Simply tell them that it was 

I.” 

“That you were spending the evening alone 
with a young man in his place and having a 
very emotional time? My child, you haven’t 
ordinary sense!” 

They were staring at each other like two 
foreigners with no language for communica¬ 
tion. 

“But common honesty, mother! We can’t 
let Walter be accused of a thing like that.” 

“Neither can I let my daughter be ac¬ 
cused—” Mrs. Lee’s lips closed bitterly over 
the rest. “If you could have heard the expres¬ 
sions used by the woman who explained the 
situation to me, you would be thankful to be 
kept out of it. My train was very late, so I 
had strolled up the road to see what the ex¬ 
citement was. The mob had broken in the 
door of the barn and of course they smashed 
the statue of Nina to bits. They were at it 
when Walter arrived.” 

“Oh, what did he do?” 

“I did not wait to see. There was evidently 
a fight, and then he came tearing past on his 


266 


A LINE A DAY 


horse. I was afraid you might be involved, 
so I hurried home. I think we can trust Wal¬ 
ter not to drag us into it. It is perfectly pos¬ 
sible that he is in no way to blame about the 
girl, and those things blow over with a man.” 

“Oh, mother, mother!” Mary Lee was bod¬ 
ily bowed down. “We are as far apart as the 
Poles. Do you think I am going to keep still 
just because it would look a little badly for 
me? Looks—looks—I can’t live by looks. 
We owe Walter the truth.” She rose, but her 
mother stepped between her and the door. 

“Mary Lee, you don’t know the world! I 
. do. For once, listen to your mother. They 
will find the girl, and Walter will be exoner¬ 
ated. I am certain of that. Now don’t be 
quixotic and rush into an abominable pub¬ 
licity.” 

“Mother, suppose I were in trouble;” the 
words came slowly and distinctly, as though 
to partly deaf ears; “and suppose the truth 
would clear me, but Walter didn’t stand by 
me and tell it—what would you think of 
him?” 

Mrs. Lee brushed that aside with an impa¬ 
tient, “A man—that is different.” 


A LINE A DAY 


267 


“The truth for men, looks for ladies,” said 
Mary Lee bitterly. “Eighteen-eighty. You 
can’t hold me back, mother.” 

“I can forbid you to go!” 

“No.” Mary Lee turned to leave by the 
other door and her glance just touched the 
mantelpiece. “No—you can never decide 
things for me again.” 

Mrs. Lee shrank back as though from a 
physical blow. Mary Lee was at the front 
door when she spoke: 

“I haven’t yet told you why I was going to 
town by the early train.” The crushed voice 
might have foretold something momentous, 
but the girl saw only an effort at delay. 

“You can tell me when I come back,” she 
said, and went out. 

Mary Lee’s anger carried her like a battle 
horse for the first few blocks; after that she 
had to plod along on sheer character. She 
did not in the least mind the possible scan¬ 
dal, she told herself; but having to admit to 
a mob that one had cried out loud—when one 
really never cried—was abominable. Curi¬ 
ously enough, now that Walter was accused 
from the outside, her vague jealousy of Nina 



268 


A LINE A DAY 


was wiped out; she was serenely certain of 
his innocence. 

Simmons Street was deserted, its doors and 
windows blankly open, but the road beyond 
the station, mounting gently under old ma¬ 
ples, was dark with people. The car stood 
empty before Walter’s barn and its occu¬ 
pants held the doorway, making a ring of 
authority about Walter and a furious little 
old woman. All Simmons Street was there— 
old and halt, derelict and dirty, young and 
hard and bold. Walter’s head was bloody 
but unbowed, he wore his torn shirt as a 
toreador wears his cloak, and Mary Lee rec¬ 
ognized with a pang of tenderness that he 
was having a glorious time. His accuser, de¬ 
scribing some foul act in foul words, was 
drunk with her own passion. Walter’s hand 
suddenly closed down on her arm. 

“Shut up!” he commanded in a shout that 
brought a startled lull. “I don’t know where 
Nina is, but I can make a good guess,” he 
went on, turning to the constable. “I paid 
her yesterday and so did Murphy—she has 
lit out for the city. She’s got city on the 


A LINE A DAY 


269 


brain. I made a statue of her and I found 
these ladies busting it up. Well, all right; 
statues are always made from living models, 
but they don’t understand, so it looked queer. 
We’ll let that go. What I want of you fel¬ 
lows is to hold them still while I get it 
through their heads that I had nothing what¬ 
ever to do with the fact that Nina didn’t come 
home last night.” 

“You didn’t come home yourself,” called 
an ironic voice. “Yeah—where were you?” 
Others took it up with whistles and catcalls. 

The constable raised a formidable hand 
for silence. 

“I guess you better explain, Mr. Lucas,” he 
said reasonably. 

Walter’s jaw took an obstinate thrust. “I 
got caught in the rain and stayed with 
friends,” he said. 

More catcalls greeted that. The old woman 
turned on the constable. 

“Ask him who the girl was that was crying 
and sobbing in his barn last night! Ask him 
that! Tim Conner heard her, crying and 
sobbing. Ask him who she was!” 


270 


A LINE A DAY 


Walter had visibly started and paled. “Not 
Nina,” he snapped. 

The crowd broke into hoots and the con¬ 
stable’s friendly eye had grown dubious. 
Mary Lee, working her way through the cir¬ 
cle, lifted her hand for a hearing. She had 
drawn breath to speak when the words were 
taken from her: 

“I can explain it to you.” Mrs. Lee stood at 
her daughter’s elbow, a fine lady in every 
conscious line of her being, fine lady dealing 
patiently with low mob. The authority of 
her voice and presence stilled the tumult, 
opened a path before her. Walter, starting 
forward, breathed a quick protest, but was 
silenced by a fine lady gesture. 

“Mr. Lucas spent the night in my home;” 
Mrs. Lee, mounting the doorstep, looked 
them over as she looked over the audience 
from a parterre box. “He was good enough to 
shelter me here yesterday evening; I was 
caught in the thunderstorm and made very 
nervous. Then he took me to my home, the 
old Austin Lee place, and I made him stay.” 
She actually did lift her lorgnon. “Would 


A LINE A DAY 


271 


any one here like to ask me any questions? I 
am Mrs. Lee.” 

The name completed what the manner had 
begun. There was no corner of Uplands that 
had not discussed Austin Lee’s millions and 
the missing will, and in this, his own terri¬ 
tory, the name was still a power. The crowd 
pushed and swayed for a good look at her, 
and its anger was broken. 

“Well, Mrs. Lee, if you want to vouch for 
Mr. Lucas, I guess it will be all right,” the 
constable said, and added some sharp warn¬ 
ings about house-breaking and keeping the 
peace. Individuals began to slip off with un¬ 
ostentatious haste, and a general stampede 
followed. Nina’s grandmother was led away, 
generalizing bitterly. Walter brought out 
cigars and the motor departed, full of happy 
fragrance. All that was left of the incident 
was the broken clay on the floor and the 
three of them: Mrs. Lee ready to ignore a 
vulgar incident, Walter touched, troubled, 
yet dangerously near laughter, Mary Lee 
downcast and ashamed. 

“It was awfully good of you, Mrs. Lee,” 


272 


A LINE A DAY 


Walter exclaimed. “I wouldn’t have brought 
you into it for anything—but you were very 
kind and generous to do it. I don’t half know 
how to thank you.” 

Mrs. Lee’s response was edged with sharp¬ 
ness: “You can thank me by being a little 
more prudent for my daughter when she is 
not prudent for herself.” 

“I know. You’re perfectly right.” He was 
grieved. “I forget all about things like scan¬ 
dal. George Murray wouldn’t have let you 
in like that,” he admitted to Mary Lee as one 
might pour ashes on his head. 

She had picked up a fragment Of a lovely 
little arm and was staring blindly at it. “All 
the fights we haven’t had,” was beating 
through her brain. “All the times I have 
hated it, but kept still. That is why we are 
fighting to the death now. There must not 
be any more of that.” It was one of the hard¬ 
est moments of her life, for from her own 
viewpoint Mrs. Lee had been a trump. Mary 
Lee felt like Regan and Goneril as she fal¬ 
tered her protest. 

“I didn’t come down here to get out of it by 
lies,” she said. “I came down to tell the truth.” 


A LINE A DAY 


273 


Mrs. Lee tried to find her amusing. “Wal¬ 
ter, did you ever see a grown girl so ignorant 
of the world?” 

He was looking fixedly into Mary Lee’s 
face. “What did you mean to tell them?” he 
insisted. 

She lifted her heavy eyes to his. “That I 
was here last night and that I cried.” 

Walter’s gleaming little agate eyes were 
suddenly tear-wet. “Oh, you wonder, you 
darling!” he burst out. “You good sport! I 
would have died before I’d have let you, but 
I can see you doing it, perfectly quiet and 
brave—ah, you’re such a lady, Mary Lee!” 
Taking her two hands, he bent his head to 
kiss them. They clung to his, and the answer 
in them, the flood tide from her heart to his, 
brought his startled eyes back to her face. 
He minded Mrs. Lee no more than he minded 
the plaster Polo Player at his back. 

“Dear,” he said slowly, “when you cried, 
you told me that some one you loved was 
hurting you. That you loved him for life but 
were heart-broken at something he was do¬ 
ing. It nearly killed me. Did I misunder¬ 
stand? Wasn’t it—” 


274 


A LINE A DAY 


The flame in Mary Lee’s face was an agon¬ 
ized warning. Mrs. Lee, examining a new 
study, affected not to hear, and the return of 
Leerie and Wagner from a hunting expedi¬ 
tion made a merciful diversion. 

“Missed all the fun,” Walter told them. 
“Serves you right for not staying by the job. 
Don’t you know that you’re watch-dogs 
now?” 

The dogs wagged and wriggled and 
pressed up to every one, even to Mrs. Lee, 
who had never patted a rough head in her 
life. She turned to go. 

“You are doing very good work, Walter,” 
she said from the doorway, “but I think you 
would be wise to import your models from 
town.” 

“Yes: I realize that.” Walter went quickly 
to her side. He would have granted her any¬ 
thing in that exalted moment, and he was 
dangerously near to embracing her. “Of 
course, you know that it was all rot about 
Nina,” he hurried on. “It simply couldn’t be 
true—there is no room for Ninas. She has 
gone to the city to be a professional model. 


A LINE A DAY 


275 


Any one with half an eye could have seen it 
coming. Simmons Street will know better 
when it has cooled down.” 

“Simmons Street!” Mrs. Lee’s smile was 
bitter. “Mary Lee, do you still feel anxious 
to clean it up?” 

“The houses, not the people,” Mary Lee 
said meekly. “I had a feeling that decent 
houses might help, that’s all. Perhaps they 
wouldn’t. And yet I’d like to live near enough 
to—oh, to see for myself.” 

“You can live right on Simmons Street any 
time you like:” Walter’s voice sang and a 
smile flashed between them. 

“There is one thing I’m more discouraged 
about than Simmons Street,” she went on, 
“and that is the ending of war. Unless we 
end men. Walter, you adored that scrap!” 

His laugh admitted it. “Well, I couldn’t 
keep out of it, could I? I was so mad, I got 
a chair by the leg and cleaned out the whole 
bunch. Then I saw they were going to be too 
much for me and I was afraid for the other 
works, so I lit out by the back way and got 
Ivan.” He laughed again. “I suppose you 


276 


A LINE A DAY 


saw me go by and ran down to help. You 
would!” 

“Mary Lee, we must go,” Mrs. Lee said im¬ 
patiently. 

Walter was quite ready to go with them, 
undisturbed by a bloody scratch across his 
forehead, a broken collar and various gaping 
tears. 

“Hadn’t you better look in a mirror?” Mary 
Lee suggested. 

He located the tears with simple interest. 
“It’s only skin,” he explained. 

Mrs. Lee turned away as though this was 
too much, and Mary Lee followed, but she 
loved him for it with a love that was like 
anthems. Her bird-man—flying straight 
across all the silly barriers! 

“How could I have suffered about Nina?” 
she wondered. “That was vulgar—that was 
a spot from our vulgar life. Walter can say 
naked things that would make mother blush 
to the eyes, but he’s crystal-clean.” What he 
had called her kept resounding in her ears: 
“You darling—you good sport—you’re such a 
lady, Mary Lee!” “I will be all those things 


A LINE A DAY 


277 


forever and ever,” she vowed, her eyes lifted 
to the June sky. 

She had forgotten the silent mother at her 
side. Her step pressed forward, and Mrs. 
Lee found keeping up difficult. Her face 
grew pinched and gray, desolation looked 
out of her dark eyes, her mouth became a 
bleak line, and still Mary Lee did not notice. 
She automatically held open the gate and the 
front door, but without a glance for the 
beaten figure that went through. When she 
came back from her belated breakfast, a 
glass of milk and a piece of bread, taken 
standing, she found her mother still in hat 
and gloves, sitting exhaustedly in Austin 
Lee’s chair. Mary Lee’s pause asked a ques¬ 
tion. 

“You win,” was the bitter answer. “You 
were quite right—I can not do it.” 

“Mother!” Mary Lee came impulsively 
toward her, but a hard look forbade demon¬ 
stration. 

“Don’t misunderstand,” Mrs. Lee com¬ 
manded. “I think you are a fool, and that I 
am a worse one for giving in to you; but you 


278 


A LINE A DAY 


force me to choose between you and the 
money, you impose your will on me. It is 
hideously unfair; I will never admit that you 
are right. But I will tell the college about 
this money.” 

It was not a victory to bring rejoicing. 
Mary Lee searched the tightly closed face for 
an opening. 

“Then you’re going to hate me ever after?” 
she asked desolately. 

There was a quiver, an instant’s uncer¬ 
tainty, as Mrs. Lee turned away her head. 
“Ah, if I hated you it would be simple enough. 
It was not exactly hate, Mary Lee, that made 
me . . . those hours and hours last night when 
I didn’t know where you were. I couldn’t 
stand it—not knowing. Not sure you were 
coming back. It broke me.” Mrs. Lee’s fin¬ 
ger tips pressed a forehead that visibly 
ached. “Everything I have wanted in life is 
right there, within my grasp—ease and 
beauty and being Somebody. The things I 
was born to! I give them up for you. And 
presently you will leave me for a slouchy no¬ 
body who can never even give you a car. 


A LINE A DAY 


279 


That is what being a mother means!” She 
was showing her tragically little soul to the 
depths; but her daughter turned away her 
eyes. 

“It is hard, horribly hard. If you do this 
for me”— Mary Lee faltered, then hurried 
on—“do you want me to say that I will put 
off Walter for you? I don’t say give him up, 
I couldn’t; but would putting him off for a 
year help?” 

For a dreadful moment the question hung 
between them; then each saw past the bitter¬ 
ness into the other’s torn heart. 

“My poor child!” Mrs. Lee murmured, and 
at the same moment, “My poor mother!” 
broke from Mary Lee, and they clung to each 
other with hidden faces. 

Nothing more was said. When they spoke, 
it was of trivial things, their voices struggling 
back to the decent reticence of every day. 
But Mary Lee’s every glance was a caress and 
a thanksgiving, and Mrs. Lee accepted with 
weary gratitude what there was left in life. 
She did not explain why, exhausted as she 
was, she must nevertheless take the next 


280 


A LINE A DAY 


train, or why she carried a suit case when 
she was coming back that night, and Mary 
Lee asked no questions. 


t 


CHAPTER XIII 


When she had seen her mother off, a me¬ 
chanical consciousness of the morning’s work 
led her up-stairs, but she only sat on her un¬ 
made bed, brooding. Walter came, whistling 
the old obbligato as he rang the doorbell, lu¬ 
minous with his joy. He would have had her 
walk down-town at once and marry him, but 
when she explained that her mother had 
gone for the day he agreed disappointedly 
that they must await her return. 

“The place isn’t really ready for you; but 
with you on the spot we can make it just 
what you want,” he said. “Murphy says I 
may do anything and he will give me a ten 
years’ lease. Will you marry me to-morrow, 
then?” 

Mary Lee thought it over from every angle. 
“I wore my good white gown to the pageant 
and it got rained on, but I could do it up to- 

281 


282 


A LINE A DAY 


night. My mother has some little tags of in¬ 
vestments, enough to live on with this house 
ours, so she is all right. And I have a hun- 
dred dollars of my own from the sale, so I 
could buy my trousseau first thing in the 
morning—” 

I “While I am washing the dogs,” Walter 
put in, and they laughed gloriously, then 
forgot to plan, slipped away from the need 
of speech. 

“I never could understand it—that I could 
love you like this, and you not love me,” he 
told her, presently. “I’m nothing, but the 
love is so big, it’s big as all outdoors. How 
could you stay shut against it?” 

“There was a ceiling over my head,” she 
murmured. 

a 

“And what is there now?” 

She looked up into the little agate eyes, so 
near her own. “Oh, the sky, the great sky, 
wide open!” 

They got lunch together, and Walter, 
newly alive to her ways and needs, admitted 
that they must wait a week while he made 
some additions. 


A LINE A DAY 


283 


“Mrs. Murphy will do all the rough work, 
and roast things, and all that,” he explained; 
“but you will want a nice little white kitch¬ 
enette, all electric, and a room that is yours, 
not even Leerie can go in unless he is invited. 
With a fireplace, and sun. Like this.” 

He made sketches and she altered them, 
and they grew so enthusiastic that finally 
Walter rushed off to engage carpenters and 
to break ground that very night. Mary Lee 
went up-stairs to do the neglected work, but 
she could only dream at the windows. Her 
wedding was scarcely a week away! 

She was looking out when her mother 
came home, and saw again that effect of 
fragility that had once so startled her, a 
shoulder dragged down by the suit case that 
had seemed so light to Mary Lee. In the 
brief walk from the gate to the steps, Mrs. 
Lee changed the bag from one hand to the 
other, then took both hands. Mary Lee had 
started to run down when something in her 
mother’s outline, some droop of utter abne¬ 
gation, brought understanding upon her like 
a physical clutch. She shrank into her room 
and noiselessly closed the door. 


284 


A LINE A DAY 


She ought to have guessed it from the first. 
The mysterious income that Julia could not 
understand, Carrie’s sudden prosperity, the 
new blouses and secret silks, they were all 
dreams conjured out of Austin Lee’s strong¬ 
box, and now they were drearily shrinking 
back into it. There was no mysterious invest¬ 
ment, no money but their dwindling hun¬ 
dreds. Mrs. Lee could not possibly take a 
place in Walter’s crazy household, and his 
dole would be the bitterness of death to her, 
even supposing that he had it to give. Wal¬ 
ter was prosperous for the moment, but a 
sculptor’s earnings were always uncertain. 

“Why, I can’t leave her;” Mary Lee sat 
stunned before the revelation. “I have got to 
work for her, earn her living. That is my 
price, what I’ve got to pay for what I have 
demanded. I can’t marry Walter now. It is 
only justice for me—but, oh, my poor boy!” 

She could see him down there furiously at 
work, getting ready for her. It would be so 
hard to make him understand! And equally 
hard to make her mother accept their fate, 
consent to immediate action. 


A LINE A DAY 


285 


“And yet, if she will go to work with me 
now, perhaps in ten years or so Walter and I 
can be married,” Mary Lee said on a long 
sigh, and went to have it out with her mother. 

“If it is to be boarders for us, let us have 
boarders right away, while we have some 
money to start on,” she began abruptly from 
the door of her mother’s room. “If I do all 
the work and planning, mother, will you 
stand by and consent? May I start things 
now—to-night ?” 

Mrs. Lee sat in a small rocker by the win¬ 
dow, her graceful hands idle. She turned her 
head to look at her daughter, an anxious pro¬ 
test in her eyes, as though Mary Lee could al¬ 
ways be counted on to make trouble. 

“My dear, I am giving up this money, but 
you must allow me to do it in my own way,” 
she said patiently. 

“So long as we tell—” 

“We are telling. I went to town for a talk 
with George Murray.” Her voice warmed. 
“He is so sensible and so successful, Mary 
Lee! And perfectly devoted to you still. 
How you can let a man like that go—” 


286 


A LINE A DAY 


“I know,” was the contrite answer. 

“Well, I told him, and he felt just as I did, 
that the college had no moral right to the 
money. But, of course, they have a technical 
right. So I put the matter in his hands, pro¬ 
fessionally, and he has gone up to Brewster. 
He thinks he can make them do something 
for us, perhaps an income for life. He says 
we ought to have all the income from what 
I found. I suppose you will have some fancy 
objection to taking it—” 

“I will not!” It was a cry of pure joy. 
Mary Lee dropped on the floor at her moth¬ 
er’s feet. “Oh, mother, I would lap it up! 
How perfectly wonderful!” 

Mrs. Lee looked down into the radiant face 
with an answering relief. “One never knows, 
with you,” she murmured. 

The young hands closed tightly over hers. 
“Lovely, lovely, lovely!” Mary Lee chanted. 
“How will he make them do it? Shame 
them? Point out how nobly we have be¬ 
haved?” 

“He will know how—if it can be done.” 
There was no need to go into that with Mary 


A LINE A DAY 


287 


Lee. She and George understood each other 
as she and her daughter had never done. 
“George is so resourceful. I wish you might 
have some of those diamonds, darling. They 
are very beautiful. He must have been col¬ 
lecting them for years.” 

“I’d rather you had them,” was the warm 
answer. “And you could have a fine apart¬ 
ment, you and Carrie, and your own car, and 
wear imported models—ah, I’d be glad for 
you!” 

“And you?” There was pain in her moth¬ 
er’s voice. 

“There’s nothing I want to buy. I only 
want my Walter, mother.” The upturned 
face begged for sympathy and Mrs. Lee, after 
a sigh, did her best. 

“Walter is very sweet and lovable, and he 
is gifted,” she conceded. “If you can just 
make him care a little more for looks!” 

Mary Lee laughed to herself. “I will see 
that he doesn’t get arrested,” she promised. 
“Oh, how soon will George know? Soon 
enough for us to be married next week?” 

“Next week!” Mrs. Lee was only amused. 


288 


A LINE A DAY 



“Why, my child, you couldn’t get the an¬ 
nouncements engraved. And you don’t want 
ready-made lingerie. It will take three 
months to get a proper trousseau.” 

Mary Lee laughed again and made no com¬ 
ment. 

To Walter the finding of the box was pure 
romance. The great rolls of bills and the 
bag bursting with diamonds meant to him 
Sindbad and Aladdin rather than worldly 
goods, and escorting it to the bank for safety 
was an adventure out of Treasure Island. 
If he connected the money with Mary Lee’s 
past unhappiness, he gave no sign. The days 
of suspense went by in plans and dreams. 
That any one should want to live in a barn 
passed Mrs. Lee’s understanding, but she had 
given up trying to rule her child. 

“They are full of grand ideas now, but 
wait a year or two,” she said comfortably to 
Carrie as they inspected apartments on the 
upper East Side. 

George himself brought the news of a com¬ 
plete victory: the income of the hidden for¬ 
tune was to be theirs for life. Mary Lee was 


A LINE A DAY 


289 


down at Walter’s place, inspecting her new 
room, and so she did not hear his version of 
what had passed between him and the col¬ 
lege trustees. George had just heard her 
news from his mother, and would not wait to 
see her. Mrs. Lee went with him to the bank 
to make the formal transfer of the box, and 
he arranged for her a generous advance, so 
that she might begin immediately to feel 
rich. She tried in vain to warm his gravity 
with her thanks, and watched him with a 
sigh of compassion as he went soberly down 
the village street. 

“Well, anyway, he gets a good commission 
out of this,” she consoled herself, and tele¬ 
graphed Carrie to take the apartment. 

She carried home mushrooms, strawber¬ 
ries, endive, frosted cakes, all the delicacies 
she could carry, bought out of her full purse. 
She was laying down her load on the kitchen 
table when Mary Lee and Walter came in, 
hand in hand, and the packages told them. 

“This looks to me like millionaires,” said 
Mary Lee. 

Mrs. Lee had a document to show them. 


290 


A LINE A DAY 


She even kissed Walter. Then she set about 
preparing lunch for the last time in her life. 

“I’ll have a good maid by night,” she prom¬ 
ised herself. “Darling, if you will hull the 
strawberries—” 

“It looks to me like a wedding feast,” Wal¬ 
ter interrupted. “Mary Lee, clap on your hat 
and we’ll get married.” 

Mrs. Lee supposed it was a joke and smiled 
tolerantly. Mary Lee looked dubiously from 
herself to Walter. 

“You look very nice, for a wonder,” she 
said, “but I’d have to change my gown.” 

“Well, trot along. We only have to get a 
license and be married up—it doesn’t take 
any time at all. We’ll hull the strawberries 
when we get back.” 

“All right.” Mary Lee was actually turn¬ 
ing to the door. Her mother’s busy hands 
dropped. 

“My dear girl—you are not in earnest!” 

“Why not, mother?” 

“Marrying now—without any wedding—• 
like a runaway shop girl!” Mrs. Lee could not 
believe her senses. 


A LINE A DAY 


291 


“Mother dear, I couldn’t be bothered with 
a wedding.” Mary Lee pleaded. “Neither 
could Walter. I am tired. So much has hap¬ 
pened! Don’t you think we are rich enough 
to do what we please?” 

“But you haven’t any—” Mrs. Lee’s deli¬ 
cacy compromised on “things.” Then the 
necessities of the occasion drove her to plain 
speech: “You haven’t even a silk negligee!” 

Her horror was so genuine that they gave 
her a day’s grace. They would be married 
in the morning, take an early train to town 
and buy those unescapable “things” as well 
as an inexpensive roadster that Walter had 
had his eye on, then cruise deliciously for a 
June week, “under the sky,” Mary Lee ex¬ 
plained with a secret smile for Walter. 

“Buy a trousseau in one day!” Mrs. Lee 
almost cried, but there was no making them 
listen to reason, and she presently accepted 
the situation with an effort at grace. A 
woman of the world must be a good loser. 

“What make of car?” she asked, braced 
for the worst. 

Walter named a fairly distinguished mak- 





292 


A LINE A DAY 


I 

er; the car had been slightly used. Mrs. 
Lee’s troubled forehead relaxed to a patient 
peace. At least, she was not called on to 
bear that . 

Their happiness was no bar to appetite. 
Both ate largely, joyously, at perfect leisure. 
Mrs. Lee could not have forgotten the ghastly 
fatigue of the day before her own wedding, 
the sense of strain and of expense, the end¬ 
less things that had to be seen to, her hysteri¬ 
cal tears and the cold she took, and yet that 
still seemed to her the only way to be mar¬ 
ried. Her mind was busy with the explana¬ 
tions she must make to the world. 

“You won’t get any presents,” she said sud¬ 
denly. “I shall send out announcements as 
soon as they can be engraved, but people 
don’t send presents for announcements.” 

Walter started up, “Oh—your present!” he 
exclaimed. “My present to you, darling Mary 
Lee—I was forgetting it.” 

“Do I get a present, too?” she marveled. 

“You bet you do!” He crowed with laugh¬ 
ter. “It’s all ready—I’ll be right back with 
it.” 


A LINE A DAY 


293 


“Surely you are not buying it in Uplands?” 
Mrs. Lee put in, trying to sound playful. 

“They couldn’t do it any better in New 
York,” he assured her, and hurried off. 

Mrs. Lee turned eyes of anxious commis¬ 
eration on her tranquil daughter. 

“I hope it won’t be anything queer,” she ex¬ 
claimed. “Walter’s taste in jewelry ought 
to be good—a sculptor and all that: but your 
husband’s presents are one of the real diffi¬ 
culties in married life, Mary Lee, and you 
might as well face it. To thank them and yet 
not encourage them to buy without consult¬ 
ing you will take all the tact you can learn.” 

Mary Lee smiled at her from a long, sunny 
distance. “If Walter brought me a brass 
breastpin with a red glass stone, it would 
seem to me a quaint and lovable sort of gift,” 
she said. “But I don’t believe it will be 
jewelry.” 

“The bridegroom’s gift is always jewelry,” 
Mrs. Lee maintained. “Now, dear, haven’t 
you a great deal to do?” 

Mary Lee could not think of anything, and 
she so little understood their new position 


294 


A LINE A DAY 


that she promised to give her room a good 
cleaning when she got back. They were still 
sitting at the table, speaking occasionally 
from their different spheres, when Walter 
came in gleaming with suppressed fun and, 
bending over Mary Lee, laid a long envelope 
before her. It was obviously not jewelry. 
She thought of a poem, Mrs. Lee had a 
thrilled hope of bonds. 

“Open it,” he commanded. 

Within was a deed transferring to Mary 
Lee property therein described: nine hun¬ 
dred feet on Simmons Street— 

“Walter!” She opened her arms wide to 
him and laughed till she cried. 

“But what is it?” Mrs. Lee kept asking. 

“It’s Simmons Street!” No matched pearls 
ever won a more lighted face. Walter was 
mightily pleased with his exploit. The trus¬ 
tees had been delighted to sell at a low price, 
and the houses, well built in their day, were 
still fundamentally sound. 

“You can do anything you blanketty blank 
please with them, no matter what Cousin 
Julia says,” he exulted. 


A LINE A DAY 


295 


Mary Lee started up. “I want to go and see 
them this minute!” 

“Come along,” said Walter. 

Something in the way her mother was sit¬ 
ting smote Mary Lee. She came back to lay 
a hand on her shoulder and make the most 
generous offer her full heart could devise: 
“Dear, don’t you want to come with us?” 

Mrs. Lee shuddered. “I certainly don’t!” 
she exclaimed. “And I can’t understand 
you! If Walter had brought you a deed to 
a home, that would be one thing. But to buy 
two blocks of loathsome slum for a wedding 
present—and you act perfectly delighted— 
you don’t seem like my own child at all! 
You don’t seem human!” 

She was so distressed that they sat down 
on either side of her, earnest to console. 

“We have been talking it and talking it,” 
Mary Lee explained. “Simmons Street means 
something special to us, mother.” 

“Well, what does it mean?” She was fret¬ 
fully ready to listen. 

“That I’ve found my way.” 
get the right words. 


It was hard to 


298 


A LINE A DAY 


“She has found her job,” Walter contrib¬ 
uted. 

“In our old life—” she hesitated, fearful of 
wounding, “you were building, mother, but 
my days were just one after the other, no 
connection between them, not piling up into 
anything—can’t you see? Oh, they were 
deadly! And I got so mortally tired of clean¬ 
ing floors and silver and personal things—I 
Wanted to clean up a corner of the world: to 
take a dreary old spot and make it fresh and 
good and lasting as you did with clothes. I 
wanted it the way Walter wants to make 
clay into polo players and young riders. It 
is what I am good for—I have at last found 
that out. When Simmons Street is all clean. 
I’ll buy up other holes and gradually make 
them humanly decent—it will go on and on! 
Do you see what I am trying to say?” 

Mrs. Lee would not admit that she did. 
“You used to seem happy enough—and now 
with a brilliant life possible—” she com¬ 
plained. “What set you off on this track?” 

Mary Lee had to think and the answer 
brought a startled laugh. “Grandfather 
Lee! Of course! It was that wretched line a 


A LINE A DAY 


297 


day. It made me face things—my empty 
days—nothing more important to write down 
than ‘washed my hair.’ Think of it—a grown 
woman! Suppose a man had to put down 
‘had a shave’ as the most important event of 
his day—wouldn’t you hate him? Oh, I could 
keep a grand diary now! And I owe it all to 
Austin Lee.” 

“It’s a good joke on him,” Walter added. 
“But I will buy her beautiful things, too, Mrs. 
Lee. Loads of them. You wait!” 

They found Simmons Street wide open to 
the day’s warmth. Slattern and loafer 
lounged from the broken windows, babies 
slept and sick men coughed on the little rot¬ 
ting porches, hungry curs nosed about the 
rubbish of the yards. The still air was full 
of sound—sawing and hammering, shrill 
quarreling, whacks and a wail. Mary Lee’s 
step faltered, her hand slipped into Wal¬ 
ter’s. 

“It is a funny wedding present,” she ad¬ 
mitted in a small voice. 

“You needn’t do a thing about it: it is just 
there if you do want it,” he urged. “We 
won’t go in to-day.” 


298 


A LINE A DAY 


The new impulse to act had to fight down 
the old impulse to shrink and shut her eyes. 
She took back her hand, squared her 
shoulders. 

“No, I am going in now and I’m going 
alone.” 

“Oh, no, dear!” 

“Yes. If you were there I’d get behind you, 
let you do it. And it is my job. Mine from 
beginning to end. We will consult about it at 
home, but I will do it.” 

Walter was reluctant. “They’re a rough 
lot—” 

“They won’t be rough to the new landlady! 
And I don’t want you waiting outside. Go on 
home and I will come there and report. That 
is the way I want it, Walter.” 

“Then that’s the way you are going to have 
it.” And Walter went resolutely on while 
Mary Lee turned in at the first house. 

Two hours passed before she came up un¬ 
der the maples, walking strongly, her eyes as 
intent as Walter’s before a new conception 
in clay. He was carving the arm of her chair 
and looked up to smile welcome. Dogs and 
kittens ran to meet her. 


A LINE A DAY 


299 


“Well?” he said. 

“Oh, splendid!” She spoke absently. 
“Walter, I want a pencil and paper.” 

He gave her a pad and went back to his 
carving. Mary Lee made rapid notes, then 
disappeared for a long talk with the carpen¬ 
ters who were working on her own new 
room. When they left for the day, she came 
back and dropped down, admitting fatigue 
in a contented laugh. 

“Well?” Walter repeated. 

“Some of them were wheedling and hor¬ 
rid,” she began, “trying to get things out of 
me. And some were surly—two were drunk; 
and some were sad and decent and worried 
to death for fear I would raise the rent. And 
I will raise it! This is no Lady Bountiful 
business. But no one who is willing to work 
—Oh, I shall make mistakes. I don’t know 
anything yet. But I shall find out how, grad¬ 
ually. The power of money, Walter—my 
mother is perfectly right. I have never had 
the least conception of it. Oh, it is all so— 
blamed—interesting!” 

“Perhaps you would rather not go away 
to-morrow?” Walter suggested. 


300 


A LINE A DAY 


She laughed again and held out her arms 
to him. “I think we’ll go,” she said into his 
coat. 

In the morning they were “married up” as 
Walter called it, and took an early train to 
town. Walter had telegraphed about the car 
and he was waiting in it when Mary Lee 
came out of the big shop with her new bag 
full of new things, wearing the handsome 
motoring coat and hat on which her mother 
had insisted. Walter also had made himself 
fine, and they stood looking each other over 
with intense appreciation, unaware that 
there was a public streaming by them. 

“I did everything mother told me to and 
spent all the money she gave me,” Mary Lee 
announced. “So that’s that. We don’t have 
to think of it again. Take me away, Walter. 
Take me as far away as you can.” 

His hand on her arm answered as he put 
her into the car. The city clocks were at six 
when they crossed the ferry and set out into 
a world brimming with June. At nine o’clock 
the round moon came shouldering over the 
hills and they stopped on the edge of a wood 


A LINE A DAY 


301 


for supper. Mary Lee, lying on the rug Wal¬ 
ter had spread for her, watched him get out 
the things with a secret smile for his earnest 
preparations. He did love to play house! Out 
of his new lunch box came all manner of 
good foods, cold and hot; but they would 
have been as content with bread and cheese. 
The warm night dreamed about them, the 
breath of the first garden was on their quiet 
faces. 

“I used to dislike the moon,” Mary Lee said, 
looking gravely into its broad face. “It hurt 
me. Moonlight didn’t seem quite fair.” 

“How do you feel about it now?” Walter 
wanted to know, looking at it over her 
shoulder, as though he and it also had some 
old scores between them. 

“Why”—she had to search for her words 
—“I feel that it knew best!” She could tell 
that he was smiling. “I think marriage prob¬ 
ably settles the moon. You don’t have that 
trouble any more,” she added. 

“It is hard to see how we can ever again 
have any trouble,” Walter murmured. 

The moon slipped into a cloud scarf and 


302 


A LINE A DAY 


for a long moment there was darkness. When 
the light came back they silently gathered up 
the things and went on. From the top of the 
next hill Walter pointed to a cluster of lights 
on a mountainside. 

“There,” he said. 

The car went cautiously down the hill, then 
crept as timorously along the level road of 
the valley. All the flying speed of the earlier 
hours seemed to have gone out of it, and 
presently Mary Lee looked a question. 

“The car’s all right. I’m being careful,” 
Walter explained. 

She always understood. “Oh, yes. We 
couldn’t be killed now,” she assented. 

Walter’s carefulness was tossed overboard 
and the car shot forward toward the waiting 
lights. 


THE END 
















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